Second Chance
by Lisse
Summary: Ten years after tragedy divided the Z Senshi, Marron and Trunks confront looming danger and learn the hardest lesson of all: saving the world means saving each other.
1. Prologue: In Fire

Disclaimer: _Dragonball Z_ is the property of Akira Toriyama. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

Author's Note: This is an Alternate Universe story. It follows the canon timeline until a few years after Pan and Bra's birth, and then it heads for left field. What does that mean? It means that while I may use a few elements from GT, _GT didn't happen_. So there. Nyah. ^_^ 

**Second Chance**   
**Prologue: In Fire**

_Spring 783_

Marron was twelve years old. 

She was not a quiet child, but she was an observant one, and she had long ago learned that sometimes watching and listening were more important than speaking. So she watched her mother buy a black dress and a hat with a small veil to cover her face, and she listened when her father explained patiently that she must show respect and not fidget. Eventually he stopped explaining, because Marron had heard it so many times that repeating it again made no difference. She knew all about funerals. There were too many that spring. 

She watched the caskets and the mourners, but more than that, she watched the helpless grief and rage. No one knew who had created the strange firebombs, which had proven themselves capable of killing Saiyans at close range. No one knew if there was a rhyme or a reason behind the attacks. No one knew who or what rendered the Dragon Balls all but useless and sealed the mortal realm from Ano'yo, so that not even Uranai Baba dared travel from one plane to the next. 

Marron watched, and because she was observant, she saw what others didn't want to see. As every old standby failed them, her parents and their friends resorted to more and more normal, mundane ways to cope. Without their ability to defy death, they were just very powerful normal people. They argued and wept. Friendships fractured and families splintered, because they didn't understand. They didn't know what to do. 

But Marron did. 

That was why she asked her parents to train her -- not because she wanted to be a fighter, but because she wanted to know what it was like to live in both worlds. Even after the Deadly Spring ended and the firebombs vanished, she was determined not to be helpless like the adults had been. She would learn to live in both worlds, and she would be good at it. No one would ever catch her off guard. 

Someone with that kind of motivation can go far. For all her faults, Marron had motivation to spare. 

She went far. Others didn't. 

And it began. 

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TBC 


	2. Chapter One: The Incredible KickBoxing C...

Disclaimer: _Dragonball Z_ is the property of Akira Toriyama. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

**Second Chance**   
**Chapter One: The Incredible Kick-Boxing C.E.O.**

_Satan City_   
_Spring 793_

It began again ten years later, on a warm spring night that found our heroine in deep trouble. 

Not that she would have ever said so. She was both rich and powerful, attributes rarely obtained by admitting one was up shit creek without a paddle. She just glared at her hovercar, gave it a good kick and wondered where the hell she was. 

Marron was twenty-two years old, and to the sort of people who like women tall, blonde and young, she was very attractive indeed. Her business suit consisted of a gray jacket with shoulder pads and a matching gray skirt that ended halfway down her thighs. A pair of tiny pearl earrings and a pearl necklace completed the ensemble, as did a pair of black shoes with stiletto heels. She was a picture of poised bitchiness, and any observer would have been hard-pressed to guess that at that moment she was just a little scared. 

She glowered at the hovercar. "What the hell did he put in you? Diesel?" When the hovercar failed to answer, she drummed manicured nails on the hood and briefly considered ki-blasting the brand new vehicle into next week. After a moment she decided against it. Therapeutic though it would be, someone would feel it and questions about her training would start all over again. 

"I'm going to kill him," she muttered to the world in general. "I'm going to rip off his arms and them I'm going to use them to beat him to death." She pulled a tiny cell phone out of her jacket pocket and peered at it for a moment, debating whether she should call the tow truck or the aforementioned 'him' first. She decided on the tow truck. This looked like one of Satan City's less savory areas, and even C.E.O.s could get shot. 

Calling anyone proved to be impossible. She had been using the cell phone all afternoon to yell at the lawyers over in Johannesburg, and the battery was dead. Marron was holding an expensive piece of junk, which she glared at for a moment before stuffing it back in her pocket. "Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful. What else can go wrong?" 

When one asks a question like that, the universe is honor-bound to answer it. In this case, the answer came in the form of a laugh from the darkened alley behind the hovercar. "What's a pretty little thing like you doing here?" 

Marron rolled her eyes skyward. _Dende, you and I are going to have words._ Instead of flying up to the Lookout and giving the Namek a piece of her mind, she folded her arms across her chest and turned to see who had tried such a truly unoriginal line on her. 

There was a large group of rough-looking men gathered outside the alley. A quick scan told her that there were eleven in all, and that she had more ki in her pinkie than all of them had put together. In other words, she really didn't have time for this. "People really say that?" she asked flatly. "I'm disappointed." 

The largest of the men -- Marron dubbed him Leader, for lack of a more fitting description -- snickered and took a step forward. She kicked off her heels and shifted into a sparring stance, earning herself hoots of laughter from the toughs. "You wanna fight us?" Leader asked. 

Marron raised an eyebrow. "Just attack me already." 

"Fine, little girl. If you don't want to play..." Leader smirked and started forward. 

Marron just smiled. It was a very cold, very unfriendly kind of smile. It was, in fact, the kind of smile normally found on alien princes, homicidal _jinzouningen_, and others of that ilk. "Try it," she snapped. "Go ahead. I've had a very bad day." 

Leader kept coming forward, although he seemed to have lost some of his zeal. Marron's attitude was clearly bothering him. He glanced at his gang once, as if to remind himself that they were still there. Then he squared his shoulders, took one more step forward, and grabbed her jacket. 

Marron punched him in the face. 

"Amateur," she muttered as he flew backwards, knocking over two of his companions. The other eight roared and charged, which only proved to Marron that they hadn't been hand-picked for their intelligence. She met their flurry of blows with neat blocks and a few experimental punches of her own. There was no one here she couldn't handle. Honestly. Why did people assume that she couldn't defend herself, just because she was a woman in a suit? 

Not that most women would have been able to leap backwards over the entire mob like an acrobat and calmly crack heads together with neat flicks of the wrist. But that wasn't the point. 

It was over in a matter of seconds. Marron smirked and dusted off her hands. That hadn't been hard at all. She turned to the last three, more than ready to finish them off -- 

-- and found herself staring down the barrels of three guns. Oh, _crap_. 

She shifted into a more defensive position. "I didn't know you had those," she said, because someone had to state the obvious. 

"No shit, sweetheart." Leader took a step closer, but not quite close enough for Marron to knot his arms behind his head. "What the hell _are_ you?" 

"Pissed off." Marron curled her hands into fists. "You have no idea who you're dealing with, you little slimeball." 

Leader laughed. It definitely wasn't a pleasant sound. "What?" he said mockingly. "You mean you're _not_ the C.E.O. of Capsule Corporation?" 

Marron's rage drained away as something inside her went very cold. Oh, _shit_. This hadn't been a robbery at all. It hadn't even been a botched attempt to murder her. These guys were just here until someone else came along -- probably someone with ki training, who knew what the daughter of two fighters was capable of. She was willing to bet that her hovercar dying hadn't been an accident either. This was hostile corporate takeovers taken to a whole new level. 

Realizing this was all well and good, but what was she supposed to do about it? Technically she could fly, but she didn't want the world to know and if the way Leader held his gun was any indication, he could probably shoot her out of the sky. Just because she fought a hundred times better than the average thug didn't mean she was invincible. She was in a very vunerable position right now. 

Damned if she was going to admit it. 

She let out a cold, mocking laugh of her own. "You're stupider than I thought. You idiots are going to be the scapegoats when my body turns up in a ditch. Did that ever occur to you?" 

"Shut up!" Leader's finger twitched on the trigger, but he didn't look happy. Obviously that thought hadn't occurred to him at all. 

Marron smiled, showing lots of white teeth. "Let me draw a picture for you. It's going to be all over the newspapers tomorrow. Front page, screaming headlines -- the works. There will be a nice big investigation, and some cop will find evidence tying you to my murder. Then they'll come and arrest you, and you'll get a one-way trip to the electric chair. If my parents don't find you first, anyway." 

"I said shut up!" Leader snapped. Then curiosity got the better of him. "Your parents?" 

Someone hadn't done his homework. Sloppy. "Maybe you've heard of them?" she asked in her most condescending voice. "Kuririn and Juuhachi? Martial artists?" She laughed, even though her heart was trying to hammer its way out of her chest. "They're going to have to scrape you off the street with a _spatula_... 

"Shut up!" Leader pulled the trigger. Marron barely had time to dive out of the way. She wasn't quite fast enough. The bullet grazed her side, leaving a white-hot, painful line across her abdomen as if flew past her. She twisted to one side just as two more bullets whistled past her ear. A third brushed her upper thigh. Great. Now they were all shooting at her. She tried to concentrate on preparing a ki blast. If she was going down, they were definitely coming with her. 

A voice rang out to her left, sounding the most absurd battle cry in the known universe. 

"CHAAAARRRRGE!" 

She didn't see exactly what happened next. There was a blur out of the corner of her vision and then the sound of punching and kicking and really inventive swearing. It didn't surprise her that someone else was fighting for the privilege of killing her or kidnapping her. What _did_ surprise her was the newcomer's ki. It was almost as strong as her father's, and Kuririn wasn't exactly a weak man. 

Hissing in pain, she climbed back to her feet and hobbled over to the scuffle. She still couldn't tell exactly what was happening, although two of the gunmen had been forced down the alley and were apparently trying to hit something. From the number of gunshots -- and more importantly, the creative obscenities -- they weren't having much luck. Leader was closer to her and on his knees, one arm hanging limply at his side. He was holding his gun with his good hand and aiming down the alley. Marron grabbed his wrist in one dainty hand and twisted it, snapping the bones like twigs. "That's for trying to kill me," she said sweetly. Then she kicked him in the groin. "And _this_ is just me doing the gene pool a favor." Abandoning him, she retrieved his gun, flicked the safety on, and tucked it into her skirt's waistband. She looked ridiculous, but sometimes it paid to have a conventional weapon available. 

The sounds from the alley faded as the newcomer finished flinging the other two men into an overflowing dumpster. She still couldn't make out any details, but it looked like whoever-it-was was very small. "Hey!" she called out. "What the hell's going on?" 

"Hang on!" a piping voice answered. There was one last scream for mercy and a dull thud. Only then did the newcomer emerge, stolen guns jammed in the pockets of an oversized jacket. 

It was a little girl. 

As Marron watched, the pipsqueak closed her eyes and shook her head sharply. Her ki dropped to just above normal human levels. Marron barely managed to keep her jaw off the ground. Not only was this kid very strong, but she could control her ki. 

_What the hell?_

The girl couldn't have been more than ten or eleven years old -- either too old or too young to be related to any of the surviving Z Senshi, no matter which way Marron approached the problem. Her black hair was short and straight, while her eyes were dark and very large on her face. She was thin, almost painfully so, but something about the way she moved reminded Marron of trained fighters. Maybe this kid didn't have more than eighty pounds on her, but everything she had was wiry muscle. 

"Dumbasses," she muttered, the insult sounding strange in her child's voice. She examined Marron's wounds with the air of someone who had seen worse many times before. "You'll be fine," she pronounced. "Shiner can't aim to save his life, the stupid fuck. At least you took him outta the gene pool." 

Marron stared as her unlikely rescuer launched into a string of impressive obscenities, including one that suggested this Shiner person -- the Leader Marron had injured -- had unsavory relationships with blenders. It was like listening to a small, especially foul-mouthed version of Videl Son. 

That was who the kid reminded her of, she realized belatedly. She was almost a miniature version of Videl. At least, she thought she was. Videl had died a long time ago, and she didn't exactly keep pictures around. 

"What's your name?" she asked as the girl helped herself to Shiner's wallet. When the kid opened her mouth, no doubt to deliver a snappy retort, she quickly overrode her protests. "I'm not going to turn you in. You saved my life." 

"_And_ I saw you fight," the girl added. "Can all rich ladies do that?" 

_Crap._ Marron wondered exactly how much she had seen. Probably everything. "No," she admitted. "My father and mother taught me how to fight. It's not exactly common knowledge, so don't tell anyone." 

"My lips are sealed." The girl retrieved a package of cigarettes from Shiner and shoved them in her jacket pocket. "So are you gonna stay here and wait for these dumbasses' friends to come, or are you gonna get out of here?" 

Marron's opinion of the kid's intelligence went up several notches. "My hovercar's broken," she said. "Where's the police station?" 

The answer was a laugh. "Might as well hand yourself over to whoever wants you dead. The cops here'll sell their own moms." Finished with her plundering, the girl stood up and planted her hands on nonexistant hips, frowning at Marron as if she was a complicated puzzle. "I guess you can come with me 'til we figure out what to do with you." She held out a hand. "My name's Gizoku." 

"Marron." She shook the proffered hand. It was like arm-wrestling a steel vise. 

The girl's eyebrows vanished under her uneven fringe of bangs. "As in Marron Kuri of Capsule Corp? Shit. Hito's gonna kill me." 

"Hito?" 

"None of your business, lady." She glanced around with the practiced eye of someone checking for enemies. "We're good," she said after a moment. "Let's go." 

Marron glanced at her bare feet and then back at the hovercar. "Hang on." She retrieved her briefcase, but decided to forget about the heels, even if it did mean walking across the pavement with no shoes. Maybe she could float a little bit when the girl -- Gizoku -- wasn't looking. Or then again, maybe not. If this girl could control her ki, she could probably sense others'. 

"Do your parents know you're out this late?" she asked instead. 

Gizoku laughed. "Rich ladies!" she muttered, her voice colored with something that was both amused and disgusted. Then she glanced over her shoulder long enough to look Marron squarely in the eye. "My mom and dad are dead." 

"Oh." Marron kicked herself mentally. "I didn't know." 

"I was little. Never knew them." Gizoku grinned. "Hito takes care of me anyway. She's gonna _love_ you." 

Marron couldn't tell if that last comment had been sarcastic or not. "Did Hito teach you how to fight?" 

There was a long silence. Then the little girl just rolled her eyes. "Damn, lady! Stop bugging me or I'm gonna let your friends back there take potshots at you!" 

The threat wasn't terribly serious. Marron could tell. Normally she didn't like taking orders from anyone, but Gizoku had helped her for no apparent reason. She didn't ask any more questions. 

But she did wonder if Goku Son would want another student. 

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TBC 


	3. Chapter Two: Chibis, Chibis Everywhere

Disclaimer: _Dragonball Z_ is the property of Akira Toriyama. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

**Second Chance**   
Chibis, Chibis Everywhere

_Satan City_   
_12:00 a.m. local time_

Later, when the more resilient had begun to heal, they called it the Deadly Spring of 783. The exact number of dead could never be known -- the powerful firebombs incinerated anyone too close to them, ki-user or not -- but those who could be identified had their names carved on marble in memorial gardens. Thousands had died, including the best and brightest the world had to offer. Their relatives were left to pick up the pieces and to wonder, for no one ever claimed responsibility and even the experts could find no clues to the identity of the attackers. 

The scars were still there, for those who knew to look for them. New buildings were smaller. The gardens honoring the dead came to be sacred spaces. There were no jokes about fire. And people remembered, in the back of their minds, that it was never safe around flames. 

In time, the firebombs were left as a mystery to be puzzled over by historians and conspiracy theorists. The damaged buildings were demolished and cautiously rebuilt, the memorials were visited less and less frequently, and all that was left of the victims were the names on the wall. 

Two of those names, the woman named Hito explained, had once belonged to Gizoku's parents. 

Marron shifted uneasily on a folding chair and glanced across the tiny, filthy apartment to where the strange little girl sat cross-legged on a bare mattress, watching an old kung fu movie on the black and white television and inhaling an entire box of Twinkies. She had stashed her two stolen guns somewhere and handed the cigarettes over to Hito, firmly ordering the older woman to sell them, not smoke them. When Hito had immediately disobeyed her, she had just shook her head sadly and turned away. It was obvious that this was an old argument -- and that Gizoku was worried about her bizarre companion. 

As she returned her gaze to Hito, Marron had to admit that there was reason for the girl to be concerned. Gizoku's guardian was so thin she looked ill. Her skin was stretched taut across the angular planes of her pale face and her large green eyes were sunken and dull. She was dressed in a sequined tube top and a pleather miniskirt -- her street uniform, she explained with a laugh -- and she had dyed her short hair a lurid shade of pink. She wasn't much older than Marron, but her face was lined and she had lost two of her teeth. Part of the reason for her ill health was readily obvious to Marron. Every few minutes Gizoku would offer Hito a Twinkie, an anxious look flashing across her face, and every time the obviously hungry woman would refuse it. Marron didn't understand why. Twinkies weren't the most nutritious thing in the world, but there _was_ an entire box of them. 

With an effort, she wrenched her thoughts back to the topic at hand. "Her parents died in one of the bombings?" she said softly. 

Hito nodded. "Don't know how else to explain it. I found her when she was about four. First thing she remembers is a man in a suit. She told me about him once." She stared down at the card table that served as counter and pantry, frowning at something only she could see. "She said he was on fire." 

Marron felt sick. Gizoku couldn't have been more than a year old during the Deadly Spring. Somehow she knew with utter certainty that this child's first memory was seeing her father burned to death. "She doesn't know their names?" she asked. 

"Hmm?" Hito tilted her head to one side, her eyes glazing slightly. Then she squeezed them shut and smacked the side of her head with her palm. "Damnit! Shut up! I don't want you!" 

"Fuck. Not again." Gizoku crossed the tiny apartment in two quick strides and grabbed Hito's wrist in what was no doubt an unbreakable grip. Hito didn't seem to notice her presence; she just continued muttering and shaking her head back and forth. 

That was the other thing about Hito -- the one thing Gizoku had mentioned during the short walk to the apartment complex that served as her home. She was crazy -- as in insane. Off her rocker. Lost in space. She heard voices, she occasionally seemed to switch personalities, and she would have episodes like this one, where she lost all contact with the real world. Marron watched silently as Gizoku half-carried the empty-eyed woman over to the mattress with no apparent effort and set her down, allowing her to curl into a ball. 

Gizoku trudged back over to the card table and stood right next to Marron. The little girl folded her arms across her chest, glaring at her as if expecting a challenge. Just then she looked much older than ten. 

"Well?" she muttered. "Got something to say, rich lady?" 

Marron fought back the urge to flatten the brat with a smartass comment -- or a smack. "I can't help her," she said simply. 

"No shit. You're just wondering where we hid the phone so you can get outta this hellhole." Gizoku settled herself in the folding chair Hito had abandoned and propped her elbows on the edge of the table. Her eyes traveled over Marron's shoulder to where Hito was slowly relaxing and drifting in and out of consciousness. "She's just as sane as you and me sometimes," she snapped suddenly. "I don't care what you think about her anyway, rich lady." 

"I didn't expect you to care," Marron retorted irritably. She had come here for a phone, not a freak show. She needed a long hot bath and a decently stocked fridge and her king-sized bed, and then she needed to call in favors with law enforcement and get whoever had tried to have her killed sent to prison. For life. 

Gizoku just nodded once. "Good." Her brow furrowed as if in deep thought. Then she sighed and leaned back in her chair. "She took me in, you know. Took care of me when I was gonna starve to death. I eat a lot." She made the simple statement sound like the confession of some horribe sin. "She thinks I don't know it, but she doesn't eat if we can't find enough to feed me. I'll tell her I'm full, but she knows I'm lying." Her eyes darkened and her face set in a scowl. "I wanna leave so she doesn't starve, but if I do the shitfaces around here will..." She grimaced. "You know what I'm talking about, rich lady. There's always some sickos who wanna see what it's like to fuck the crazy girl." 

Marron nodded slowly. Considering the smart remarks she had gotten before, she had just received a wealth of information. "Why are you telling me this?" 

"'Cause I know you won't try to save the poor little street kid," Gizoku spat. "That's what all the shelter ladies are like. 'Look at the baby girl.' 'What happened to your mommy, sweetheart?'" Her face contorted into an expression of utter disgust. "I'm old enough to take care of myself. I don't need their fucking charity." 

Marron still didn't see the connection. No one would ever catch _her_ working in one of those shelters. "So what does all that have to do with me?" 

Gizoku just snorted. "C'mon. You're Marron Kuri. The day you give away a zenni is the day Hell freezes over." 

For a moment Marron couldn't think of anything to say. Her normal answer -- that of course she never gave anyone anything; she was the one who worked hard to earn what she had, after all -- somehow stuck in her throat. Maybe it was because she was sitting in Satan City's armpit with no shoes and a gun jammed in her skirt's waistband. Maybe it was because of Gizoku, with her strange power and a cynical view of life that she found all too familiar. 

For whatever reason, she looked at the little girl and made what was possibly the worst decision of her life. 

_Screw Goku,_ she thought as she rose from her chair. He wouldn't know how to train Gizoku. She needed a human sensei, not a spiky-haired eating machine. 

She floated off the ground, rising higher and higher until her head almost brushed the ceiling. Gizoku's ki flared instinctively as, open-mouthed, she scrambled over to a groggy Hito and stood protectively in front of her. Her face was completely open, and Marron could see the emotions flicking across it in rapid succession: fear, awe, disbelief, jealousy... 

_Recognition?_

"Holy _crap_," Gizoku whispered hoarsely. Then her hands balled into fists and her jaw set in a stubborn scowl. "You wanna hurt Hito, you're gonna have to come through me!" She must have been truly terrified; the bravado, already worn thin, had vanished completely. "I'm sorry about calling you a rich lady, okay?! But don't you dare hurt her!" 

Marron smirked. At least she had the kid's attention now. "If you don't shut the hell up, I will hurt you. Understand?" When Gizoku nodded, still scowling, she floated back down to the floor. "You still haven't told me who trained you. I know it wasn't Hito. She doesn't have enough ki to fill a teaspoon." 

"Shut up! And I'm not gonna tell, either." Gizoku was starting to calm down now that Marron wasn't hovering, but she was obviously still scared out of her wits. "Why the hell do you care so much about who trained me, anyway?" 

"Because I want to try." 

Even as the words left her mouth, Marron felt like smacking herself, or maybe banging her head against the wall. _Crap. I did _not_ just say that._ What the hell had she been thinking? She was the C.E.O. of the largest and richest corporation in the world. She didn't have time to train a street brat, even a strong one. Bad enough she had to put up with that stupid roommate of hers... 

Gizoku sat down on the mattress. "You wanna _what?_" 

"I want to train you," Marron said, before common sense and rational thought could fight off whatever strange impulse it was that had taken hold of her. "You and Hito can stay in my apartment. I'll feed both of you, and in return you'll behave yourselves and learn how to fly." 

She had her. Even though Gizoku made a great show of rolling her eyes heavenward, Marron had seen the way her face had lit up for a moment. She was completely enchanted with the idea. Marron knew that look. She had seen it once or twice before in the mirror, back when she had been capable of that kind of innocent excitement. 

"All right," Gizoku said finally. "What the hell? As long as you let me take care of Hito." Then she gave Marron a strange, sidelong look and started to chuckle. "You know what, rich lady?" 

Marron groaned. There was the nickname again. She could have bounced rocks off of the little brat's self-confidence. "No. What?" 

"I wonder what all those fuckers in Hell are gonna say when it freezes over." 

~~ 

Halfway across the city, Trunks Briefs awoke to find a furry tail wrapped around his neck. 

_Huh? Whuzzat?_ He cracked open an eye and found himself face to diaper with the bottom half of Goshin Son. The baby had somehow gotten onto his chest and had fallen asleep. Despite the fact that the kid was trying to choke him, Trunks couldn't help but crack a smile. He had always had a soft spot for Goshin. 

"Oh! You're up!" A nine-year-old girl with gravity-defying pigtails grinned and poked Trunks's shoulder. "I was gonna wake you up, but you looked so comfy that I didn't wanna move you." 

"Thanks. I think." Careful not to wake Goshin, Trunks rolled the baby onto the expensive leather sofa. He wasn't particularly worried about getting it dirty. It wasn't his sofa, after all, and he wouldn't have to pay for the cleaning bills if Goshin had an accident. "What time is it, Gochi?" 

Goshin's big sister shrugged. "Dunno. Late." She pointed to the enormous flat-screen television that occupied most of the luxury apartment's living room. She had found a bad martial movie and was watching it with a critical eye. "They don't fight good. No flying or anything. I could beat them without even going Super." 

Trunks just groaned. If that piece of shit was on, then it must have been around midnight. "Isn't your mom wondering where you are?" 

Shrug. "Dunno. She's probably still hitting Daddy and Uub with the frying pan 'cause they trained instead of going grocery shopping." 

"Gochi, _I_ don't want to get hit." Trunks shuddered at the thought. There were few things more terrifying than Chichi Son's weapon of choice. "What do you say we get you home?" 

"But Mommy's gonna get mad at me 'cause it's past my bedtime! I don't wanna get hit with the frying pan!" Gochi wailed, and latched onto Trunks's arm. "You said we could stay until Miss Marron came back and yelled at us!" 

All thoughts of death by skillet vanished. "Wait a minute," Trunks said, pushing himself upright. "Marron's not back yet? Has she called?" 

"Nuh uh." 

Trunks frowned, stretching his senses in an effort to sense his roommate's ki. She often worked very late, but she always called -- mostly to yell at him about when he was going to pay for all the food he ate, or to demand that he cut off his long purple ponytail. Aside from making money and pushing her rivals down the corporate ladder headfirst, Marron's favorite activity in the world was baiting Trunks. If she hadn't called by now, something was wrong. 

Gochi seemed to have picked up on his concern. "Can you sense her ki?" 

"I'm working on it." Trunks almost asked her to help, but thought better of it. He had more experience sensing ki, and after all this time mooching off of the irritable C.E.O. it was easy for him to pinpoint her location. 

Marron's ki was halfway across the city, as bright as a beacon. "Found her." He rose from the sofa and began to hunt for his battered sneakers. That was another one of Marron's pet peeves; she kept trying to buy him new clothes and new shoes, but he always insisted on wearing the same thing: tee shirts, worn jeans, sneakers, and his secondhand army jacket. "I'm going to check on her. Take Goshin and go home." 

"But Trunks..." 

"No." 

"But -- " 

"No." 

"_Pleeeeaaase?_" 

Trunks sighed. He knew he couldn't refuse the cheerful little girl. Along with Uub, he was the closest thing she had to a big brother; Gohan had died a year before she was born and Goten had made it very clear that he wanted a normal life -- a goal that meant no contact with his decidedly abnormal family. On the other hand, Trunks had remained very close to the Sons and had welcomed the chance to have a little sister again. His mother, sister and grandparents had been killed just like Gohan, the victims of one of the strange firebombs, and any chance of remaining close to his grief-stricken father had died with them. 

He glanced at Gochi, who was holding a groggy Goshin at arm's length and muttering about how badly the baby smelled, and his slight smile faded. Some big brother he was. He couldn't hold down a job, he had spent far too many of the past ten years in the comfortable haze of a drunken stupor, and he only had a roof over his head because the bitch queen of the universe -- otherwise known as Marron -- considered him too far beneath her notice to bother kicking him out. How long had he been living here? A year? Two years? He didn't remember. Then again, he didn't remember most of the last decade. None of the good things, anyway. 

"Do we have to take the hovercar, Trunks? You drive as bad as Mommy." 

As usual, Gochi was there to prove him wrong. There _were_ good things, if he knew where to look. "Thanks," he said flatly, knowing the girl would completely miss the sarcasm. "We're going to fly." 

"Yay!" Gochi bounced up and down, jostling Goshin until the baby began to cry. Immediately she stopped and began cooing to her little brother. She doted on him. "Hear that? We're gonna go show Miss Marron how much you like flying!" She floated off the ground and spun him in a circle. Instead of wailing, Goshin just burbled happily, latched onto one of her pigtails, and tried to stick it in his mouth. His tail coiled around Gochi's wrist like a furry bracelet. 

Trunks hid a smile. "Come on, you two." He opened one of the windows -- the one that he had figured out how to shut from the outside -- and flew into the night, Gochi and Goshin trailing behind him. 

~~

_Pepper City   
6 p.m. local time_

One goal, many starting points. Where, then, did this particular path begin? 

Some would argue that it began when a young boy, sent out to destroy a world, instead became its champion. Others would argue it began when the son of that boy met the daughter of a man who sought to claim others' glory for himself. Still others would argue -- vehemently, for their argument was the strongest -- that it began when a young man found his brother dead and chose to sever all ties with those who had once been his closest companions. 

These are all logical alternatives. However, for the moment it would be best to say that this path began when Son Paresu opened her front door, uttered a truly impressive string of profanities, and hit her unfortunate visitor with a spatula. 

"You! How dare you show your face here! Coward! Bastard!" Each word was punctuated with a blow from her weapon of choice. "You can't have them, you heartless mother-loving son of a cheap whore!" 

It got worse from there. In fact, it got so bad that Suki Son, who had lived with her mother's inventive vocabulary for the entirety of her five short years and thought she had heard everything, actually dropped her comic book and stared in open-mouthed shock. Her big sister Sayo, who had always been a little quicker on the uptake, casually reached over and clamped her hands over their little brother Yoshi's ears. Just as well. Some of the things their mother was describing were anatomically impossible. Especially that bit about the goat and the cottage cheese. 

"Momma!" Suki shouted, risking instant death by spatula. "Stop it or I'll call Poppa!" 

"That's right!" Sayo added, sounding remarkably mature for a six-year-old. She always did. "He'll come home and arrest you for noise pollution!" 

Their mother gave the two little girls a murderous look, but she lowered her voice to something closing in on normal. At the same time the visitor had apparently decided enough was enough. He grabbed Paresu's shoulders and steered her inside. This time the spatula didn't help at all. 

Suki rose from her comfortable spot on the living room sofa and stared. Whoever this man was, he looked like a cross between a gymnast and a badly dressed superhero, with a drunk hairdresser thrown in for good measure. The entire right half of his face was scarred and twisted, as if something had tried to burn away his flesh a long time ago. Although he had a very solid build, he was much shorter than their mother. That in and of itself was unusual, as Paresu wasn't exactly a tall woman. 

Whoever he was, he wasn't going to treat her mother like that. "Let go of Momma!" she demanded. "Get out of our house!" 

Instead of being impressed or laughing -- the two normal reactions when Suki threatened anyone -- the man just looked askance at her mother. If Paresu noticed, she ignored it. "Fine," she said tightly. "You're here. What the hell do you want?" 

"We need to talk," he snapped. "Where is your worthless mate?" 

With great presence of mind, Sayo abandoned Yoshi and made sure Suki didn't do anything rash. 

"Goten's at work. If you want to wait, do it away from my kids." Paresu started to push the visitor in the general direction of the kitchen, then stopped and seemed to think better of it. Suki was astonished. If she hadn't thought it impossible, she would have said that her mother was afraid. 

Well, _she_ wasn't. Suki had never been scared of anything in her life and she wasn't about to start now. "You're gonna let him stay?" she demanded, shaking off Sayo's attempts to restrain her. 

"Watch your mouth, young lady!" Paresu spun around and launched the spatula at Suki, who squeaked and dove behind the sofa. When her mother turned back to the stranger, a vein was starting to throb in her forehead. "In the kitchen. _Now._" 

Only after the two adults had disappeared into the kitchen (slamming the door behind them, no less) did Suki sit back down on the sofa. Sayo glanced down at the stack of comic books and, with a slight shrug, abandoned them. "What was that about?" she asked. 

"I don't know." Suki considered eavesdropping on the kitchen. It was a dangerous proposition. If she was discovered, she would be grounded for weeks. The thought was tempting, though. Yes, her parents were weird people, but they were weird in a normal way. They weren't friends with strange, possibly murderous gymnast dwarfs. 

Sayo seemed to be having similar thoughts. "You know," she said conversationally, "I think Yoshi wants to play over there." She pointed to a spot by the kitchen door. "And I think he wants to play really quietly." 

Suki covered her mouth with both hands to stifle her giggles. When she was sure she would be able to stay silent, she helped Sayo carry Yoshi over to the chosen spot. Both girls sat down cross-legged on either side of the kitchen door and listened. 

A few moments later they exchanged identical, horrified looks. Despite her vow to never be afraid of anything ever, Suki found herself reaching over and gripping her big sister's hand. Sayo gave a reassuring squeeze and put her finger to her lips, indicating that she wanted to hear more. Neither child moved. Not even when their father came home, seemed to stare right through the kitchen door, and sat down on the floor beside them as if his legs wouldn't support him. 

~~

_Ano'yo_

Somewhere far away, a watcher stood on green grass, her hands planted on her hips as she frowned at what appeared to be a plain bowl of still water. Behind her were others, all dressed in gis similar to hers. Her eyes narrowed. She was watching events unfold in a place she could observe, but could no longer reach. 

After a moment she stepped back and turned to her companions. Her face was deadly serious. "I think we have a problem." 

.   
.   
TBC 


	4. Chapter Three: Recognition

Disclaimer: _Dragonball Z_ is the property of Akira Toriyama. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

**Second Chance**   
Recognition

_Satan City_ A flicker of ki was all the warning Marron had before a trio of familiar faces appeared outside the apartment's tiny, dirty window. Unfortunately, this didn't give her any time to restrain Gizoku. Not that she would have been able to stop the little hellion anyway. 

"CHAAAAARRRRGE!" 

With that bizarre battle cry, the thief leapt clear across the room, smashed through the window, and proceeded to pummel Trunks with her fists. 

If Marron hadn't been so angry, it would have been very funny. 

"Yeow! Hey! Get off!" There was a confused tangle of wildly flailing limbs and quite a few inventive curses before Trunks managed to right himself. He was holding Gizoku at arm's length, although this did little to deter her. She just tried to sink her teeth into his wrist. Trunks grimaced and eyed Marron as if to suggest she was responsible for creating this little monster. "What the hell is going on?" 

"Get inside, moron! Or do you want to be on the cover of every damn tabloid in the city?" 

Trunks flushed, but managed to squirm inside the room, still clutching a furious Gizoku. His two companions followed a moment later. Marron didn't even stop to wonder why Gochi and Goshin Son were still awake, much less following Trunks around. She knew they visited him whenever they got the chance -- which was often, judging by the number of times she had kicked them out of her apartment -- but she had never seen them stay this late. 

_Then again, if I had their harpy of a mother..._ Marron shook the thought away. She wasn't one to talk. She hadn't spoken to her own mother in years. "Gizoku," she said through gritted teeth, "why did you attack him?" 

"He was flying, rich lady! I thought he was a fucking alien or something!" Gizoku made a rude gesture at Trunks, who just smirked and dropped her on her rear. She scrambled to her feet immediately and glared at him -- a scene that was almost comic, since she barely came up to his chest. "What happened to your hair, pretty boy? Dye disaster?" 

Trunks' smirk vanished. "This is how my hair is supposed to look." Ignoring Gizoku's less-than-polite retort, he turned his attention to Marron. "I thought you were in trouble. You haven't called and I felt your ki flare." 

"I haven't called because my hovercar died and my ki flared because I was being shot at." Marron glared at her roommate with as much disgust as she could muster -- which was quite a lot. "What the hell happened to you? You look...rumpled." 

"I was sleeping on your sofa," Trunks snapped. "And what do you mean someone was shooting at you?" 

"Hostile. Corporate. Takeover. Do I have to spell it out, you purple-haired twit?" 

"Only you would think that's normal." 

"Oh, like you're one to talk about normal!" 

"Corporate vampire." 

"Stupid shit!" 

Trunks rolled his eyes. He was usually the one who ended their little battles first. Not that this made Marron feel any better. She always felt like he was laughing at her. Fuming, she turned back to Gizoku, who was eyeing both adults with obvious disgust. "_What?!_" she snarled. 

The girl raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you sure you're gonna train me, rich lady?" 

"You're going to _what?_" Trunks rounded on Marron, blue eyes as wide as saucers. "Are you _insane?_ You can't train her! She's...she's...look at her! She's a little kid!" 

"Who're you calling _little?!_" Gizoku bellowed. She balled her hands into fists, her short pigtails slowly rising into the air as she began to gather ki around her, a faint but distinct blue aura began to form around her, and something about her stance seemed very familiar... 

Trunks took a step backwards. "Marron? I know I asked this before, but what the hell is going on?" 

Before Marron could answer, Gizoku darted across the room and slugged him in the jaw. "DON'T CALL ME LITTLE!" 

The blow didn't hurt the demi-Saiyan -- he had probably received worse from his own father -- but it did surprise him as much as it surprised Marron. She had known Gizoku was strong, but not _that_ strong. She stared at the fuming girl, who was rubbing her knuckles and wincing. Yes, she had hurt herself, but the very fact that she hadn't broken her hand was telling. Who the hell had trained this kid? 

Gochi's voice broke the sudden silence. "Trunks? Miss Marron? Why does she feel like Daddy?" 

And suddenly every one of Marron's half-formed, unvoiced suspicions fleshed out and became as undisputable as fact. 

"Oh, my god," she whispered. "Gohan." 

~~

_Pepper City_

The Spatula of Righteous Wrath struck again. Son Paresu's impressive vocabulary struck with it. 

"YOU BASTARD! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY KITCHEN!" 

Vegeta caught the horrible woman's slim wrist in a grip stronger than steel and glared at her. She was very weak, even for a human, but her maternal instincts were in fine form. He wondered if she had ever met her harpy of a mother-in-law. He was sure they would have gotten along famously -- or better yet, killed each other. 

The abuse continued. "You can't have my babies! I won't let them fight! I won't let you turn them into monsters like you! I -- " 

Vegeta had had enough. He silenced her by roughly jerking her out of her chair. "And what," he growled, "makes you think you have a choice?" 

Paresu gave this a moment's consideration. Then she opened her mouth and screamed bloody murder. 

A moment later the kitchen door burst open and two little blurs attacked his legs. He frowned down at them, assessing their power. The brunette -- he thought her name was Sayo -- was the stronger of the two, but the black-haired child -- Suki? -- was fierce. Neither of them had their father's strength, but that was to be expected. Given how thin their Saiyan blood was, he was grateful they had any power at all. 

He ignored them and lifted his gaze to the figure framed in the kitchen door. Goten Son was a mirror image of his idiot father, but his hair was cropped short and his dark eyes were tired. He was dressed in the blue uniform of the local law enforcement. This didn't surprise Vegeta. Everyone who wasn't hiding under a rock had heard stories about Pepper City's heroic, almost superhuman policeman. There was a little boy with Kakarotto's hair hiding behind his legs. That had to be Yoshi, the youngest spawn. 

"You heard my wife," Goten said hoarsely. "Get out." 

Vegeta folded his arms across his chest. He was an impressive figure, looking more like the Saiyan prince who had first landed on Earth so many years ago than a man who had once had a human mate and a relatively normal, human life. "You received Dende's message, brat." 

Goten winced slightly. So did Paresu. That was all the answer Vegeta needed. 

The black-haired child stopped attacking his shin long enough to peer up at him. "Momma and Poppa don't talk to gods!" 

"Of course not!" her sister said self-importantly. Then she looked at her parents and her surety vanished. Vegeta made a note of her, relieved that at least someone in this family had some measure of intelligence. 

"Momma?" the older girl asked softly. "Poppa? You can't hear gods, right? Only crazy people do that." 

"That's right, Sayo," Paresu said quickly. Too quickly. 

Sayo's eyes narrowed dangerously, like her grandmother did when she was about to pull out the frying pan. "What about all that stuff we heard before? About something bad coming to Earth and me and Suki needing to train?" 

Out came the spatula. "_How_ many times have I told you not to eavesdrop?" Paresu snapped and launched her weapon. The throw was badly aimed and the utensil bounced off Vegeta's chest. He was sure the horrible woman had a stash of them somewhere on her person. Possibly she hid them under her apron. 

Sayo reappeared from behind Vegeta. Apparently she wasn't above using him for protection. "We wanna know what you're talking about, Momma." 

"That's right!" her sister added. "Right, Mister Dwarf Man?" She grinned up at Vegeta, who growled and mentally labelled her the Kakarotto of her generation. 

"Be quiet, Suki." Goten looked away from his daughter long enough to glare at Vegeta for a moment, then sighed and shook his head. He looked very worn and very sad. "Dende said that what's coming..." He grimaced, clenching his fists, and for a moment the entire house shook as he fought to control his power. "He said it's stronger than Dad." 

"Why do you need them?" Paresu demanded suddenly. "If this thing is stronger than Goku, why do you need my babies? They don't know how to fight! What good would they do?" 

Vegeta glared at her and firmly told himself that ki-blasting her was not an option, no matter how tempting the thought was. "They're part Saiyan," he answered as calmly as he could. "Your son is stronger now than you'll ever be. Do you want to save this pathetic planet or not?" 

There was a long silence. Finally Goten bowed his head, breaking the spell. Vegeta didn't know what he was so upset about. The brat hadn't really thought he could leave his heritage behind just by running away, had he? He was a Saiyan. Saiyans fought. 

"All right," Goten said quietly. "All right. I'll train. I'll do whatever you want me to do. But Sayo and Suki aren't fighting." 

"Yes, we are." 

It was Sayo who had spoken. She and Suki took a step away from Vegeta and stood together between the adults. They were holding hands and looked very pale, but there was a determined set to their jaws. 

"We're gonna fight," Sayo said, looking from Paresu to Goten and back again. "If...if the god is right and there's something bad coming here, we've got to help. I don't know what a Saiyan is, but if it means we're gonna be good fighters, then that's okay." 

"That's right," Suki added. "Anyway, we gotta strong so we can beat up Mister Dwarf Man for scaring Momma. Right, Mister Dwarf Man?" And she gave Vegeta that damnable Son Smile. 

He glared at the insufferable brat and wondered if he wouldn't be better off letting the planet be destroyed after all. 

~~

_Satan City_

For a moment Trunks could only gape at the bitch-queen of the universe. Then his brain reintroduced itself to his vocal cords. "Marron?" he asked weakly. "Are you okay? Gohan's dead, remember? Firebombs? Funeral? Any of this ringing a bell?" 

"No, you moron!" Marron grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and hauled him across the room, dropping her voice to the barest whisper. "Feel her ki! Isn't it familiar?" 

Trunks did as he was told -- and his jaw almost hit the floor. "It...it feels like Gohan's ki." Suddenly he saw the direction her train of thought was headed in. "That _can't_ be Pan," he whispered back. "She was vaporized, and she would be fourteen by now. If that kid's older than eleven, I'll eat my coat." 

"Did I say anything about Pan? No! Pay attention!" Marron tried to smack him upside the head; he dodged easily. "Rub those two brain cells together, idiot!" 

"I still don't understand what you...oh, gods." It was insane. No, it was worse than insane. But then he looked at the furious girl standing in the middle of the filthy apartment and saw the way she unconsciously shifted into a very familiar stance, and it made a horrible kind of sense. "You think she's _Gohan?_" 

"Or some version of him, anyway. Think about it. Why would a ten-year-old with no sensei have that kind of power? She can suppress her ki, Trunks. Tell me how many people on this planet can do that?" 

He couldn't believe it. He just couldn't. The idea that his dead friend had been reincarnated as that little brat was just unthinkable. "You're crazy," he said flatly. 

"No, I'm an ex-monk's daughter. You learn things." She shook her head. "Fine. If you can think of a better explanation, I want to hear it." 

"She could...I mean...She..." He let his voice trail off. There was no other explanation. The kid was too powerful, and unless there was something they had all missed, Marron's nutty idea was the only one that made any kind of sense. He admitted defeat. For now. "Is that why you decided to train her? Because it sure as hell wasn't out of the goodness of your heart." 

"Bite me." Marron worried her lower lip, obviously lost in thought, and for just a second she looked like the sweet twelve-year-old he only vaguely remembered. "Look. Do me a favor and don't mention this to anyone. I don't need anyone getting hurt." 

He widened his eyes in mock surprise. "You mean you actually care what other people think? What's the matter? Got a fever?" 

Marron's roundhouse sent him flying into a wall. 

~~

And somewhere among the stars, moving ever closer, a being smiled coldly and reached to touch the distant planet known as Earth for a second time. 

.   
.   
TBC 


	5. Chapter Four: That Whole EndoftheWorld T...

**Disclaimer:**The author doesn't own _Dragonball Z_. She never has and she never will. She does own scattered OCs, but she is perfectly willing to share if asked and wouldn't mind getting them out of her hair. 

**Chapter Four:   
That Whole End-of-the-World Thing**

  
_Satan City_

The woman known as Hito rested in the comfortable fog that filled her vision half the time and drifted in and out of consciousness. She was aware of figures at the edge of her vision, but she didn't really bother to acknowledge them. One of them was Gizoku and when push came to shove, Gizoku was really all that mattered to her. That was the way it had been for ten years, and it wasn't about to change. As for the others? She didn't know, and as long as they didn't touch Gizoku, she didn't care. Oh, the Voices cared, but Hito knew how to fight them off by now. She was content, and so she curled up in a ball, pillowed her head on her emaciated arm, and watched through the fog. 

Most people believed that Hito was insane. 

They were mistaken. 

Insanity prevents a person from being in control of their actions, and whatever else Hito might have been, she was in complete control. It was just that sometimes it took a bit of work to assert that control. She was constantly battling for sole sovereignty of her own mind – something that "normal" people tended to take for granted – but she was on familiar ground and unless she chose otherwise, she always won. She may have been a bit off-kilter, but she was by no means insane. 

Gizoku knew part of this, of course. She certainly knew about the battles, because she was often the only witness to them. What she didn't know was one other, key fact. 

Hito was very, very smart. 

Gizoku would find that out later. Everyone would, when a prostitute with sunken eyes helped save the world. 

~*~

_Satan City, redux_

Gizoku's eyes were as wide as saucers. "Holy _crap_," she breathed as she poked the Trunks-shaped hole in the wall. The abandoned apartment next door was clearly visible in all its murky, filthy glory. "Why didn't you do that to Shiner's goons, rich lady?" 

"I didn't want to," Marron snapped, "and they had guns, remember?" She didn't bother to help Trunks up. There was no way she could have hurt him. The only reason she had managed to redecorate the room with him was because she had caught him off-guard. "Look. It's midnight and I have an early meeting tomorrow. You can stay in this shithole or you can come home with me. It's not like I don't have freeloaders already," she added, ignoring Trunks' stare. She didn't exactly want the little terror jumping on her furniture or whatever it was that kids did, but if Gizoku really _was_ a certain demi-Saiyan reborn, she didn't have a choice. 

The little girl's face lit up, the layers of cynicism melting away, and for a moment she really did look like Gohan. "Can we fly back?" she asked eagerly. 

"Flying? Who's flying?" Hito sat up slowly, holding her head and looking from Marron to Trunks to Gochi and back again. "Gizoku, what did I tell you about stealing plane tickets?" 

"I didn't steal anything this time!" Gizoku protested. "The rich lady's gonna train me like – " She stopped abruptly. "She's gonna train me," she finished. 

_Damn. Almost had her._ Marron fought the urge to grab the girl by the shoulders and shake the truth out of her. Someone had taught her how to fight and suppress her ki, and for reasons unknown Gizoku was doing her very best to hide them. "You don't want to walk?" she asked instead. 

"Hell, no!" She grabbed Hito, her small hand easily closing around the wide-eyed woman's bony wrist, and hauled her to her feet. "Did you hear, Hito? We're getting outta here!" And with a gleeful laugh, she jumped straight up in the air and wrapped her arms around Hito's neck. 

Marron half-saw, half-felt Trunks haul himself out of the rubble and move to stand beside her. "You didn't have to kick me," he said reproachfully. 

"Yes, I did. Twit." She crossed her arms and watched as Gizoku practically danced across the apartment, collecting her meager belongings. "She's behaving herself for once." 

"_That's_ behaving herself?" Trunks smiled faintly as Gizoku bounced back to Hito and handed her a small duffel bag. 

"Yep. And guess what?" she added brightly. "Since _some_ of us have to work for a living, _you_ get to watch her." 

He glared at her, looking just like his father for a split second. "Why do _I_ have to watch her?" 

"Do you have a job, Mr. I-Got-My-Ass-Fired-From-Burger-Barn?" 

"...bitch." 

"_Truuuunks!_" Gochi whined, clapping her hands over her baby brother's ears. "Don't use bad words!" 

Trunks rolled his eyes. "Why aren't you yelling at her royal highness here?" 

"Because Miss Marron's scary!" Gochi gave Marron that clueless Son smile and turned her attention to Trunks as her train of thought cheerfully derailed itself. "Maybe we can come visit more, since there's another girl staying with you two." 

"It's an apartment, not a playground," Marron grumbled, but she was ignored. She shook her head in exasperation. "Are you ready yet?" she asked Gizoku. 

"Let's go fly, rich lady!" And before Marron could stop her, Gizoku did another one of those standing jumps and wrapped her arm around the C.E.O.'s neck. For someone so small, she weighed a _ton_. 

Hito tightened her grip on her tiny duffel bag and frowned at her charge as if she had completely lost her head. "Gizoku," she said in the gentle tone of voice normally found in psychiatric wards. "These are people, not airplanes. People don't..." 

Gochi floated off the ground and drifted toward the window. 

"...fly," Hito finished weakly. She glanced at Marron and Trunks in an apparent search for sanity, since she obviously considered Gizoku too far gone. "Um...that's not normal, is it?" 

"It's normal for Gochi," Trunks said, not unsympathetically. "I think I'm supposed to carry you." 

"Oh, sure," Marron muttered. "Leave me with the little terror." She glared at the dead weight known as Gizoku and was rewarded with an unsettling grin. Ten-year-olds should _not_ have been able to smile like hyenas. 

She glared at the heavens in general and a certain green god in particular. _You and I are going to have a serious talk, Dende. And there will be sharp implements involved. What the hell did I do to deserve this?_

Earth's resident deity didn't answer. At the moment, he was too busy to acknowledge Marron's existence. 

~*~

_The Lookout_

Dende was not a happy god. He was also quite angry – a state that, while not unknown, ranked somewhere up there with Gizoku's oft-mentioned frozen Hell. The objects of his righteous indignation were a certain purple-haired demi-Saiyan and a wish that, at the time, had not seemed all that important. 

"I can't find his ki anywhere!" he growled, as Mr. Popo silently concluded that the young deity had been spending way too much time around Piccolo. "How am I supposed to communicate with him if I can't find his ki?!" 

"He didn't want to be bothered," Mr. Popo said as he tended to his garden. He liked flowers. They didn't ask rhetorical questions, for one thing. "He wished for his ki to be undetectable. You can't blame him." 

Dende just muttered something unprintable and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he looked slightly calmer. "I did find the others," he said pensively. "But this thing..." He shook his head, a habit he had picked up from his interaction with humans. "We need all the help we can get." 

"Someone will track him down eventually," the other inhabitant of the Lookout said from his familiar perch on the edge of a pillar. "A flying man with purple hair is kind of hard to miss." 

Dende just grimaced. Mr. Popo knew what he was thinking, and knew that those thoughts had nothing to do with the well-hidden Trunks. One of the most horrific things about the firebombs had been their permanence; the Dragon Balls could not wish back the dead, nor could they heal the wounded. Senzu beans might as well have been just another plant. He remembered Dende working frantically, trying to heal mortal wounds even as some other, obscenely powerful force thwarted his every effort. It wasn't that he _couldn't_ heal the wounds, he had explained later, just as it wasn't as if Shenlong _couldn't_ bring back the dead. It was just that something was obstructing their efforts. 

All of this meant that the wounded had been left to their own devices and to conventional medicine. Sometimes that had been enough. Sometimes it hadn't. 

It hadn't been enough to save Yamucha's eyes. 

"What about that strong ki I felt awhile ago?" the blind fighter asked. With the loss of his sight, his ability to sense ki had strengthened exponentially. If he said he had felt a flare of ki, no one doubted him. 

"I'll ask Goku to look into it after he finds his daughter. He and Uub should be explaining things to Chichi at the moment." 

Yamucha winced. Son Chichi had always commanded a certain amount of fear-induced respect among Earth's defenders. Now she was also younger and livelier than she had been in years; Shenlong could still grant wishes if they had nothing to do with the dead, and after the crushing news that the dragon could not restore those lost in the Deadly Spring, some good news was needed. Chichi had become twenty years younger and, in the form of Gochi and Goshin, been given another chance at a normal family. 

No wonder she was being so temperamental, Mr. Popo thought as he stared past his flowers, at something off in the distance. He had met Gochi a few times when she had visited the Lookout. She was a lively little girl, incredibly small for her age as all Sons tended to be, and what she lacked in basic common sense she made up for in a bubbly love of everyone and everything. But for all that, she was still a Super Saiyan and therefore one of the strongest beings on the planet. The next time she returned to the Lookout, it would be to train in Room of Spirit and Time with her father. 

There was a rustle of robes as Dende sat on the edge of Lookout, his feet dangling over the edge and his head in his hands. He was still very young by Namek standards and deity or not, he obviously didn't know what to do. 

Mr. Popo glanced at Yamucha and saw the same half-determined, half-helpless expression on the scarred warrior's face. He didn't know what to do either, and he didn't like it one bit. 

~*~

_Satan City_

As it turned out, Gizoku didn't need to be carried anywhere. After a few minutes of careful observation, she was wobbling off the ground under her own power. A few minutes after that, she was flying as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She may have been an ungrateful little punk, but she definitely knew how to control her ki. 

Marron watched her fly in loop-de-loops as she and her bizarre companions soared over Satan City. Trunks had warned Gizoku not to fly to low and Hito had told her to watch out for airplanes, although why was beyond Marron; if the little girl was dumb enough to run into a low-flying aircraft, the worst thing she would have to worry about would be explaining why she had plowed through a metal hull and emerged unscathed. If Gizoku was as strong as Kuririn – and Marron had more than enough evidence that she was – then that was the least of her problems. 

She looked down as the little brat dipped to the bottom of a loop-de-loop and saw an extraordinary sight: Gizoku, arms spread wide, eyes closed, leaning into the wind as if she thought it might carry her away on its own. Marron didn't know how she could look so…peaceful? No, that wasn't the right word. Gizoku wasn't calm, but she wasn't being aggressive either. She had discovered a new world and rather than running away, she had embraced it with a whole-hearted enthusiasm Marron couldn't even begin to imagine. 

_Innocent. That's it. She looks innocent. She looks like a normal kid._

There was a rush of air as Trunks joined her, carrying Hito as if she weighed next to nothing. "She's taking to this fast, isn't she?" 

Hito smiled. "Like a fish being introduced to water," she murmured, unaware of the glances Trunks and Marron exchanged. _Re_introduced was more like it, although neither of them was about to say that. 

"Hito?" Trunks asked, and for once Marron didn't glare at him for butting in before she could ask a question. He was a better people person than she was anyway. "Who taught Gizoku how to fight?" 

The pink-haired woman tilted her head to one side, watching as Gochi joined Gizoku in a barrel roll. "She already knew some stuff when I found her. But there were trainers. Oh, yes. There were trainers." 

"Names?" Marron prompted, earning herself an exasperated sigh from Trunks. 

Hito shook her head. "Oh, no. I can't tell you. I promised. And you don't break promises like that," she added, wincing and rubbing her temple. "No matter how much you want to." 

Marron didn't like the sound of that at all. Had Gizoku's mysterious trainers aggravated Hito's condition somehow, or even caused it? If that was the case, then maybe the little girl had been trained with less-than-benevolent intentions. She wasn't exactly a challenge for a Saiyan, but any of the human fighters would have a tough time beating her. And if she was this strong now, how strong would she be when she was an adult? 

"She's going to be as strong as a Super Saiyan," Trunks muttered, his train of thought obviously following a similar track. Hito blinked at him, but didn't ask questions. 

Marron didn't even bother to berate him. She just nodded once. It was very likely that Gizoku _would_ be as strong as a Super Saiyan, and she didn't like to think about what that might – 

Someone appeared in front of her. 

No, check that. Two someones. 

"What the _hell?!_" Marron pulled up short, only barely managing to avoid plowing into the spiky-haired, gi-clad warrior known as Son Goku. Trunks did a neat roll and ended up hovering in front of a young man with brown skin and a black mohawk. He looked familiar, but for the life of her Marron couldn't put a name to his face. 

Gochi, however, had no trouble at all. "DADDY! UUB!" The little bundle of energy deposited Goshin in her father's arms and sat herself on the young man's shoulders, grinning madly. "Why'd you come looking for us? We always come home eventually!" 

Goku smiled at her, but when he turned back to Marron his face was uncharacteristically serious. "I was looking for you and Trunks." 

"I made that wish on purpose," Trunks muttered, but he didn't look very angry. Marron knew that he had remained close to Goku's family and had become a sort of replacement son for them. Sure enough, his frown vanished after a moment and he grinned faintly. "So what's the proble – oh, shit." 

They had forgotten about Gizoku. More importantly, they had forgotten about her tendency to attack anything that she didn't trust. 

"CHAAAAARRRRGGGGE!" 

The little terror flew right at Goku, obviously intending to sock him right in the face. Rather than dodge her blow – which he could have done easily – the Saiyan just reached out and caught her small hand in his. She remained stuck in midair, glaring at him and straining against his fist as that familiar battle aura began to appear around her. Obviously she did _not_ like being thwarted. 

"Gizoku! Can the crap!" 

Hito's words did what an entire army couldn't have managed: they calmed her down. Muttering to herself, Gizoku extracted her fist from Goku's grip and settled for floating beside Trunks, her face set in an impressive scowl. "Who the hell is he?" she snapped, earning herself a reproachful look from Hito. 

Goku frowned at her. "Is she your student, Trunks?" 

"She's mine," Marron snapped, and rolled her eyes as both Goku and Uub gaped at her. "Yeah, yeah. Kuri's doing something useful, holy crap, it's the end of the world. What do you want?" 

Uub laughed weakly. "Heh. Funny you should put it like that…" 

Marron's heart would have dropped into her shoes, had she been wearing any. Just this once, she hated being right. "Oh. Shit." 

~*~

**Thanks To: **aerial sprite, Mchan Briefs, and especially Nadia Rose and Syaoran Blossom. You're all beyond groovy. ^_^

**Suggested Soundtrack: **"Let It Be" (The Beatles), "One Last Breath" (Creed), "Superman" (Five For Fighting), "Learn to Fly" (Foo Fighters)

**Up Next: **Evil Things are afoot, training begins, Launch terrorizes the afterlife, and Gizoku and Gochi discover bologna. Probably.  
  



	6. Chapter Five: Down Time

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonball and I never will. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

Author's Note: Mucho thanks to Nadia Rose for helping me bully Marron and Trunks into order. I promise to return 

**~*~*~   
Chapter Five:   
Down Time   
~*~*~**

_Anoyo_

It wasn't easy, being Supreme Kai. 

"Let me see if I have this right," Kaioshin said in a tone of voice that suggested aspirin would figure in his immediate future. "Enma-Daio was attacked by a..." He glanced down at the memo in his hand in the faint hope that he had read it wrong. 

He hadn't, and the girl standing in front of his desk wasn't about to let him forget it. "A blonde with a machine gun," Bra Briefs finished smoothly. "She tried to ram it up his nose." 

Shin frowned, mentally placing the famously irate Launch alongside the towering Enma-Daio. "How did she manage that?" 

"She flew." 

"And what was she doing out of…where did we send her?" 

"One of the Kais wanted to train her," Bra supplied. "The blue one with the bad jokes." She wrinkled her nose as she said this, as if telling bad jokes was a crime against the multiverse and deserved the most painful punishment imaginable. In her eyes, this was probably the case. 

Bra had been all of four years old when she died, killed by the same firebomb that had demolished half of Capsule Corporation. Her mother had demanded that the little girl be given some kind of training, and eventually Bulma Briefs' lungpower had proved more than a match for ancient codes and traditions. Bra had grown up at Shin's side, training with him and occasionally with the Saiyans in Hell. She was about fourteen now, although her simple braid of blue hair and her armor – modeled on that of the House of Vegeta – lent her a certain authority that went beyond her years. At the moment she was his messenger, his aide, and a serious pain in the ass. 

Still, she had her uses. "Go get her out of Hell," he said, setting the memo aside. "Someone's bound to file complaints." 

"Do I have to? You know that problem I had with that hydra the last time I was down there…" 

"Bra?" 

The girl stopped absently polishing her halo with her fingertips. "Yes, Supreme Kai?" 

"Do you know how long it took them to clean the hydra off the landscape?" 

"Yes, Supreme Kai." 

Shin sighed and steepled his fingers. "Bra. Go and get Launch out of hell, and do it without destroying anything." 

"Yes, Supreme Kai." 

Task accomplished, Shin turned back to his paperwork, absently tapping his pencil against the desk. 

"Supreme Kai?" 

He looked up at the fidgeting girl. Bra actually looked…nervous? That was never good. "Was there something else?" he asked, although he already knew there was. 

"The Judge," Bra said without preamble. "I know it's not exactly my job to deal with him, but I was thinking maybe you could send one of the others…" 

"And do what?" 

"I don't know. Save my _world,_ maybe?" 

"Bra!" 

She subsided with a half-audible grumble. One of these days he was going to learn where she had picked up language like that. "I understand that you're upset," he said patiently, "but in the grand scheme of things, it's just one planet. There are other worlds – other Earths and other timelines. I'm not allowed to interfere." 

For a moment she just stared at him. Then her jaw set and her eyes narrowed to slits. "Am I dismissed, _Supreme Kai?_" She made the title drip sarcasm. 

Shin just nodded. There was no reasoning with her when she was in these moods. Without so much as a cursory bow, she touched two fingers to her brow and teleported off. 

~~

_Satan City_

Marron's apartment was sparsely furnished with simple, expensive furniture, including a slightly rumpled sofa that immediately caught her attention. She gave Trunks a glare that had terrified entire boards of directors. Just because she was charitable enough to let him spend the night didn't mean he had the right to leave her furniture rumpled. 

She was ignored, of course. 

"I didn't know you were living here," Goku said mildly as he took a seat on the sofa's matching loveseat. "It's nice." 

Marron shrugged, as if to suggest the horribly expensive apartment was something she had always had. Instead she ordered everyone to stay put and disappeared into her bedroom. No one was running around screaming and fire wasn't raining out of the sky, so she was going to go out on a limb and assume the end of the world could wait until after she took a shower. She needed one. 

When she emerged fifteen minutes later in loose slacks and a sweater, hair swept into a ponytail, she found Goku and Uub bent over the coffee table, conversing in low tones. Hito had taken over the sofa and looked as if she was in serious need of aspirin, if not a trip to the E.R. To her surprise, Trunks wasn't involved in the impromptu planning session. Instead he was leaning against the wall and holding Goshin, who had fallen asleep in his arms. 

Damned if he didn't look halfway normal like that. If one ignored that coat, anyway. 

"Where the hell is that little terror?" she asked as a greeting. There was no sign of Gizoku. 

Uub pointed to the kitchen. "She and Gochi are grabbing some food." 

"At one in the morning? And who the hell gave permission for Gochi to eat me out of house and home, _twit?_" 

Trunks didn't even look up from Goshin. "What's the matter?" he asked cheerfully. "Bloodsucking C.E.O.s can't share?" 

"Purple-haired waste of space!" 

"Corporate vampire!" 

"Moron!" 

"Rich bitch!" 

"When's the wedding?" 

The indignant roommates both rounded on Uub, who had the audacity to grin at them. 

Marron had had enough of this. "I would never marry that half-witted – " 

Trunks, normally mild-mannered, joined in the tirade. "Who would want to touch that two-faced – " 

" – purple-haired – " 

" – cold-hearted – " 

"_ – twit!_" 

"_ – bitch!_" 

There was a long moment of silence as the two combatants paused for breath. Then, as one, they rounded on each other and shouted, "_And stop interrupting me!_" 

Despite the seriousness of the situation and the looming end of the world, Uub did what any self-respecting twenty-year-old would do. He laughed so hard that he fell off the sofa. 

~~

_Satan City, redux_

In the treasure trove known as Marron's kitchen, Son Gochi stopped rummaging through the refrigerator and glanced at her fellow grazer. "Don't worry," she said cheerfully. "They always do that?" 

Gizoku didn't look amused. "What the hell are they?" she grumbled from her perch on the counter. "The odd couple?" 

"Oh, they're not a couple. Mommy says they get along like a house on fire." That had never made sense to Gochi. Didn't fire burn a house? She shrugged inwardly; it was a grown-up thing, and probably not meant for the average nine-year-old mind. Instead she held open the refrigerator door and pointed to the contents. "Want some food?" she asked. Food was, after all, the universal peace offering. 

Sure enough, Gizoku hopped off the counter and made her way over to the refrigerator. Her eyes were as wide as saucers. "Hot damn," she whispered in unabashed awe. "Look at this thing!" 

Gochi giggled. "Isn't it great?" 

"No shit!" The older girl grinned and disappeared into the depths of the refrigerator. A moment later a loaf of bread, a package of bologna and an entire head of lettuce landed on the counter. Gizoku reappeared, clutching a jar of mayonnaise and a two-liter bottle of Coke and looking very pleased with herself. "Hey, Pigtails!" she called to Gochi. "Check out the greasy goodness!" 

"Isn't meat supposed to look like meat?" Gochi asked dubiously, holding the bologna at arms length and wrinkling her nose. Then, because she was a Son and Sons never refused anything that might pass as food, she shrugged and popped half the package into her mouth. 

Gizoku rolled her eyes. "Save some for me, Pigtails." And without further ado, she began to make the queen mother of all bologna sandwiches. 

"Okay." Gochi handed back the rest of the package and scrambled up to sit beside Gizoku on the counter. "Why do you call me Pigtails?" 

"You've got them, don't you?" 

That sounded logical enough. Gochi's pigtails were practically entities unto themselves. Every now and then her daddy would say that she had gotten her hair from her long-dead uncle Radditz, and then her mommy would hit him with the frying pan. She propped her chin on her hands and watched the Leaning Tower of Sandwich form. It looked really good, but a glance at Gizoku told her that she probably needed it more. The other girl wasn't skinny compared to that Hito person, but next to everyone else she was skin and bones. That was dangerous. 

"Hey, Gizoku?" she asked after a minute. 

The other girl didn't even look up from her sandwich. "What, Pigtails?" 

"You've got pigtails too. So can I call _you_ Pigtails?" 

There was a long silence. Even the sandwich construction had stopped. Finally Gizoku gave her a sidelong look and raised an eyebrow. "You know what?" she said finally. "Either you're really dumb, or you're a hell of a lot smarter than you look." 

Gochi shrugged. One or the other was fine with her. "So can I call you Pigtails?" 

The answer was a well-aimed whap with the mayonnaise jar. 

"Owwie!" Gochi rubbed her head and gave Gizoku a reproachful look. "What'd you do that for?" 

Gizoku wasn't listening. She had set aside the mayonnaise jar and even abandoned her sandwich. With a stern look, she clapped her hand over Gochi's mouth and motioned for silence. 

There were low, adult voices coming from the other room, and they all sounded very, very worried. 

"What're they talking about?" Gochi whispered. Gizoku wasn't covering her mouth very well. 

The other girl's jaw set. "I don't know," she said softly. "Trouble, I think." 

Gochi whimpered. She didn't want trouble. The last time there had been trouble was before she was born. One of her big brothers had died, and the other had decided he didn't want to see Mommy and Daddy anymore. It made Mommy really sad to talk about them, and Daddy didn't talk about them at all. She didn't want that to happen again. 

"Stop whining, Pigtails!" Gizoku glanced at the living room again, but obviously couldn't hear anything over Gochi. With a sigh, she turned back and shook her head. "I'll bully it out of them later. Now stop it! You sound like a puppy!" 

"Sorry." Gochi managed to make herself smile. "Is that better?" 

Gizoku sighed again and shook her head. "Here," she muttered, shoving the giant sandwich over. "Help me eat this. Anything to stop all that mushy stuff." 

"But – " 

"Eat the damn sandwich, Pigtails." 

Gochi picked off a piece of bologna and bit into it, her eyes never leaving Gizoku. The other girl picked absently at the sandwich, not even glancing over to see what she was eating. She had a strange, hunched look, like someone getting ready to run. 

No, Gochi decided suddenly, studying the other girl with a thoughtful eye. That wasn't right at all. 

Gizoku was getting ready to fight. 

~~

_Anoyo_

Although Enma-Daio had a temper – and, when you got right down to it, just happened to be the afterlife's equivalent of a paper-pusher – he was really quite decent and didn't deserve to have an irate blonde standing in the middle of his stationary, glaring up at him and pointing a large machine gun at his left nostril. He still wasn't sure who had pulled the strings to allow Launch to keep her body, or why she and her gentle alter ego Lunch had been carefully separated. If he had had it his way, the horrible woman would have been reincarnated as a slug. But no, the North Kai had taken it into his head to train her with the rest of the Z Senshi, and now she was more of a problem than ever. 

That was why he was more than happy to hastily grant her request (for lack of a more fitting word), hand her over to one of the lesser demons, and send the wretched woman off to Hell. At least this time she didn't try to shove her gun up his nose. He was just glad to get her out of his hair. 

Launch, on the other hand, was getting more and more nervous by the moment. This was the first time she had gone behind the other Z Fighters' backs, but after what she had seen in that damn crystal ball, she didn't have a choice. Her friends on Earth were in trouble. Yes, her friends; as much as Launch hated to admit it, she cared about what happened to her planet and to the people she had known for so many years. It must have been Lunch rubbing off on her. 

That was another thing that was making Launch nervous. She had been a fighter of a sort even before she had died, but Lunch hadn't been, so they had been separated. While Lunch had been sent up to Heaven, Launch had been allowed to keep her body and train. The link the two women had still remained, however, and it was partly because of the wimp's gentle influence that she was risking her skin in the first place. Now that link was getting weaker as she moved further and further from Heaven, and she was afraid that when that connection vanished, the vaguely altruistic motives behind her dangerous mission would vanish as well. 

The demon abandoned her at the entrance to Hell. Tightening her grip on her machine gun and readying herself for a fight, Launch picked her way around the lake of blood, settled herself on a rock, and waited. That old wrinkled pervert of a Kai had suggested this in his roundabout way, when Launch and her fellow trainees had peered at the living world through his crystal ball. If the crazy bastard was right, all she had to do was wait. He would come. 

After a while, she lowered her machine gun and began to set up camp. 


	7. Chapter Six: Dire Warnings

Disclaimer: Dragonball Z is the property of Akira Toriyama. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

Thanks to Nadia Rose for putting up with ramblings and late-night universe-hopping. My brainwave! Mine! 

**Chapter Six:   
Dire Warnings**

_Satan City_

As far as Marron could tell, the situation went something like this: 

A few days ago, Dende had been contacted by a being many times more powerful than Goku and with more sheer malevolence than anything Earth had ever faced before. It was coming in a little less than a year to "test" humanity, or so it claimed. Regardless of what this cryptic message actually meant, the fact was that the sad remnants of the Z Senshi had less than twelve months to prepare to fight this creature, and there was a good chance they would all die. 

She sat silent for a long moment, absorbing Goku and Uub's rather garbled prophecy of doom. Then, arms folded, she pinned them both with a glare and spoke like a goddess handing down judgment. 

"And this is my problem…how?" 

Uub glared at her. "You're a fighter, aren't you?" 

"My parents trained me," Marron retorted. "But no, I'm not part of your merry little kamikaze squad." She glanced at Goku, who was regarding her with a sort of sad disappointment, and looked away quickly. Whatever she had just felt, she told herself, it most certainly wasn't a twinge of guilt. "Look," she said as civilly as she could. "I'm a businesswoman. Get someone else to save the world." 

"So you're just giving up?" 

She glanced at Trunks, who was still leaning against the wall. He looked very pale, but his jaw was set and he looked like he had made some kind of difficult decision. He was going to get all heroic on her. Great. Just fucking wonderful. 

Arms still folded, she rose from her perch on the sofa and rounded on him. "And what do you plan to do?" she snapped. "Last I checked, you can't even flip burgers right." 

Trunks didn't even blink. If Marron hadn't lived with him for so damn long, she wouldn't have known that it was a low blow, much less how much it bothered him. Nor would she have noticed the tense note in his voice when he answered her. "At least I'm willing to try." 

"So what? You can get yourself killed? That's brilliant, twit. Really fucking brilliant." 

"Don't fight, guys." Goku's voice was quiet, but it overrode whatever Trunks would have said in reply. The Saiyan didn't look any different than her normally did, but he was frowning at her and Trunks as if they were misbehaving children. With a sigh, he shook his head and looked squarely at Marron. "You don't have to fight if you don't want to." 

"Good. I don't." She could feel Trunks's glare boring into her back, and the silence that filled the living room was almost a tangible thing. She didn't have a problem with it, though. She _couldn't_ have a problem with it. It was just like she had said earlier – she was a businesswoman, not a fighter. The best she could do in a battle was get in the way, and that was the last thing she planned on doing. She had worked too long and too hard to be a hindrance. 

"What about 'Zoku?" Hito asked suddenly. 

As one, the four turned to stare at the emaciated woman on the sofa. Marron had forgotten she was there – and by the looks on the others' faces, they had too. 

"What about 'Zoku?" Hito repeated, pushing herself up into a sitting position. Her enormous eyes were slightly glazed and she seemed to be staring at a point somewhere over Goku's shoulder, but her words were clearly directed at the four of them instead of at the world that existed in the privacy of her own head. "She's a fighter," she continued stubbornly. "She's stronger than a regular human. She's been trained." 

Once again, Marron tried to pounce on the opportunity. "Trained by _whom?_" 

But Hito just shook her head, swaying unsteadily, and pinned Marron with a look that made something inside her turn to ice. It was like someone else was staring through the prostitute's eyes – something much, much stronger than she was. Then those too-old eyes rolled up in her head and she slid back against the sofa cushions as, once again, she fought off her own personal demons. 

While Trunks juggled Goshin to one arm and bent to check on her, Goku leaned forward with his hands on his knees and frowned at Marron. "What was she talking about?" 

Marron grimaced. She almost – _almost_ – snapped that the little terror wreaking havoc in her kitchen was probably the reincarnation of his oldest son, stronger and faster than any normal human would ever be. But she didn't. She couldn't make herself form the words. 

"None of your business," she snapped, and turned on her heel to stalk toward the kitchen. Things were quiet in there. Too quiet. 

As if summoned by her thoughts, the little brat stepped out of the kitchen, flanked by Gochi. She looked Marron squarely in the eye. "Do you ever have a normal day, rich lady?" 

"Not since you showed up." Marron glanced at both little girls and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach. Gochi was nine, but like most Sons, she looked a lot younger than she really was. And because she was half Saiyan, she would be part of the first line of defense against whatever was coming. 

It wasn't fair, some part of her raged silently. Gochi looked like she was barely six years old. As for Gizoku… 

_She's my student, not Goku's. I'll be damned if she throws away her life._ The vehemence of her own thought surprised her, but she didn't question it. Gizoku was _hers._ Little punk or not, she was Marron's responsibility – and no student of hers was going to jump into a hopeless battle. Not if Marron could help it. 

But Gizoku had other ideas. 

Shoulders squared, the girl slipped around Marron and moved to hover protectively by Hito. Her narrowed eyes locked on Goku and Uub. Framed by those black pigtails, her face looked very pale. 

"Is all that true?" she asked. "About something bad coming to Earth?" 

Goku nodded. "Yes. It is." 

"Are people gonna die?" 

This time Goku didn't speak. He just nodded again. 

"Thought so." She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. It was the first time Marron had ever seen this strangely adult gesture, but it would not be the last. Not for a long time. 

When Gizoku's eyes opened again, she looked more like Gohan than ever. And Marron knew that nothing she said or did would prevent the little girl's next words. 

"So we gotta kick this creep into next week, right?" She smiled – a horrible, feral, utterly Saiyan smile that made Marron's heart freeze in her chest. "I'll help, cause you're gonna need all the help you can get." 

Behind Gizoku, Hito had gone sheet-white and would not meet anyone's eyes. 

~~

_Ano'yo_

Bra Briefs was in a bad mood. Of course, she was Bulma's daughter and was often in the middle of some snit or another. This was different. She was so angry that she couldn't see straight, her hands were balled into shaking fists, and she was flashing in and out of Super. 

Even the gods stayed out of her way. 

How _dare_ Shin tell her that they couldn't interfere? How _dare_ he? That was her world down there, cut off from Ano'yo by the barrier, and she couldn't even tell if her family knew what was coming. All she knew was that the Judge was somewhere out there, racing toward her helpless planet, and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it. 

Halfway to Enma-Daio's desk, the demi-Saiyan took a sharp left and headed for a very different part of the afterlife. No one thought to stop her. At that moment she was channeling every Saiyan king who had ever lived, and the look in her eyes gave even the most belligerent spirits pause. 

No one tried to stop her from flying right into the archives and bullying the demons into letting her loose among the heaps and heaps of parchment. 

There had to be an answer somewhere. There just had to be. Bra was her mother's daughter, Saiyan blood or no Saiyan blood, and she believed that every problem had a solution. It was just a matter of being allowed to find it. 

She was breaking about ten rules as it was. Shin was going to kill her. She was going to be given the worst assignments for the next millennium. 

The blue-haired girl floated to the top of a particularly precarious pile that had simply been labeled "problem cases." The cosmic archivists were so disorganized that any right-minded librarian would have taken one look at the mess and really and truly believed themselves to be in Hell. It was just as well that Bra couldn't care less about that sort of thing. She just dove into the pile, scattering papers everywhere, and began to search. 

Some time later, she emerged again, angrier than ever. She was clutching a single sheet of paper. She was also even angrier than she had been before. When she flew past, the archivists hid behind their desks. 

Snarling with rage, Bra clutched the piece of paper in her hand and teleported back to Shin's office. She was going to have words with him. Loudly. At the top of her lungs. 

This had happened before – the barrier, the Judge, everything. It had happened on different Earths in different timelines, and it had always ended the same way. 

If Bra didn't change something fast, her homeworld was doomed. 

~~

_Satan City_

After Gizoku's announcement, Marron's apartment emptied quickly. Goku reclaimed his children and he and Uub ushered them home to Mt. Paotzu, no doubt to face Chichi's wrath. Marron threw old tee shirts and pajama pants at Hito and Gizoku, ordered them to go split the guest room, and left them for Trunks to sort out. She had a splitting headache, and the last thing she needed was to deal with those two at the moment. Hito unnerved her, and whenever she looked at Gizoku she had the urge to hit something. 

In the end she found herself sitting at her desk, sorting through Capsule Corp's paperwork with a single-mindedness that had always terrified her board of directors and her vast sea of employees. Although she wasn't the nicest person in the world, she was a hard worker. She had to be. When she had taken over Capsule Corp, she had been an eighteen-year-old upstart who had inherited the company after her mother got bored with it. In her not so humble opinion, the fact that she had made it into an entity more powerful than most countries spoke of just how hard she could work when she wanted to. 

Capsule Corp as it was now was _her_ baby, _her_ creation. After all, the twit hadn't wanted it, now had he? 

Normally paperwork cleared her mind, or at least put her in the mood to drive a competitor or two out of business. Not this time. After staring blankly at one spreadsheet for who knew how long, Marron cursed and shut off her laptop. If she had been someone with more time for human emotion, she would have admitted that she was worried sick. But she was the C.E.O., and if there was one thing she had discovered, human emotions were things that had to happen to other people. 

A glance at the clock told her it was almost three in the morning. Shit. 

The apartment was actually quiet for the first time all night, and when Marron glanced into the guest room she saw why. Both Hito and Gizoku were asleep, the former sprawled on the bed and the latter curled up on a pile of blankets on the floor. The little shit looked even younger when she was sleeping, with her hair loosed from its pigtails and her face relaxed into something that might, perhaps, have been a very tiny smile. Marron wondered what she was dreaming about. 

She padded across the carpet and scooped up the little girl, intent on putting her on the bed by Hito. As she walked over to the bed, Gizoku murmured in her sleep and burrowed against her, as if she was a mother or a sister instead of someone she had just met that evening. 

_Stupid kid._ Marron tucked the little girl beside Hito, hauled a cover over her, and stalked off without a backwards glance. _Stupid, stupid kid._

Arms folded, she made her way to the living room, and was surprised to find the television still on. Trunks was sprawled on the sofa – hands behind his head, ponytail tangled around his fingers, still dressed in those ratty jeans and that tee shirt should have fallen apart years ago. He was very still, but his blue eyes were open and fixed on the television screen. 

The twit was still awake too. 

"Move," she ordered, and barely gave him time to scramble out of the way before she sat exactly where his head had been. Rather than giving up the sofa like a good lodger, he lounged against the expensive throw pillows and glared at her. Marron ignored him and flipped to a news channel. There was a stock ticker at the bottom of the screen. Her company's only rival, the Johannesburg-based Qampie Corporaton, was trying to take over the hovercar market. She hoped their stock was in the gutter. 

The news channel was doing a story on designer doghouses, further proving to Marron that the media was run by blindfolded monkeys. Trunks actually seemed to be watching it. 

Stupid twit. 

"Why aren't you asleep?" he grumbled. "Don't bitch-queens need their beauty sleep?" 

Marron glared at him. "I don't _have_ to let you sleep on the sofa," she snapped. "How about a nice comfy gutter?" 

Trunks didn't answer. He rarely did. Marron had been threatening the same thing since he had first moved in, and for reasons she didn't quite understand, she had never carried out her threats. Maybe he wasn't allowed into the guest room, but for some reason the demi-Saiyan had a solid claim to the sofa. 

"Are you really not going to fight?" he asked, and belatedly she realized he wasn't watching the news story at all. He was staring past it, at something she wasn't sure she wanted to see. 

She settled for intensifying her glare. "Of course I'm not going to fight." 

"Why did you train, then?" 

"Stop asking me questions!" Marron planted her hands on her hips and glowered at him for all she was worth, but the same look made rich and powerful men quake in their shoes had no visible effect on Trunks. "I could ask _you_ questions!" she snapped. "Like why the hell you don't have a _job!_" 

Trunks met her glare for glare. "The world's going to end in a year and you care about _rent?_" 

"The end of the world isn't an excuse for being a waste of oxygen!" 

"But it's an excuse for being a cold-hearted bitch?" 

Marron had had enough. Her eyes narrowed to slits. "I don't have to listen to this," she growled, and turned back to the television screen. If looks could kill, the news anchor would have been a small, smoking pile of ash. 

The twit couldn't leave well enough alone. "What the hell is wrong with you? It wouldn't kill you to try." 

"Oh yes it would!" Marron gave him a sidelong look that, in other times and on other worlds, her mother would have used to terrify the Earth. "You're a fine one to be lecturing me, aren't you? I'm the reason you have a roof over your head, you ungrateful bastard! At least I made something out of my life, which is more than I can say for you! You," she snarled, because she couldn't stop and didn't want to, "are the biggest failure I have ever seen in my entire _life!_" 

She threw a sofa cushion at him, which he caught without seeming to see it, and stormed off to her bedroom. She didn't bother to look back at him to see if her tirade had hurt him. 

After living with him for two years, she knew it had. 

And the fact that she had almost taken it back scared her more than anything in the world. 

~~

_elsewhere   
11:00 a.m. local time_

On a small island that hadn't seen human habitation in hundreds of years, two people dropped out of the sky and touched lightly on the bare ground. One was a girl in her late teens. The other was a blond man in his early twenties. Between them they carried two swords, a few packs, and a very small child, no more than a year old. He was their son. 

They scanned the bare island with the ease of trained soldiers and, once they were assured they were alone, they waited. 

And waited. And waited. 

"You're sure about this?" the girl asked after a long time. 

The blond man shrugged. "The witch was sure." This was clearly the same thing to him. 

The girl gave him a skeptical look, because she didn't believe in witches. She did, however, believe in her companion, in no small part because he was also her husband. For all their differences, the two would follow each other to Hell itself. So she sat on a rock, settled their son in her lap, and waited some more. 

When the old woman finally appeared, the girl didn't bother climbing to her feet. The blond man gave her an exasperated look before nodding politely to the new arrival. "Welcome, Baba." 

The witch known as Uranai Baba returned the nod. "Demetrius." She glanced at the girl. "Athena." 

"This is your witch?" the girl muttered. Her name was in fact Athena D'Arcadia, but damned if she was going to admit it. She was a practicing skeptic. 

Baba chose to ignore this less-than-complimentary question. Instead she turned her attention to her crystal ball and concentrated. A moment later an image appeared – a large orange sphere marked with four black stars. 

The man, whose name was Demetrius Ankuash, studied it carefully. He looked a little disappointed. "That's it?" 

"It, or one like it. Just get one of them away from the others. The planet's probably doomed as it is," Baba added with a sigh. "I don't need the Black Stars causing problems on top of everything else." 

Demetrius nodded. He was quiet and deliberate by nature, tending to let others take charge and worry about complex problems, but now there was a sense that he was thinking very hard. "We can do it," he said at last. "It will take a while, but we can do it." 

"I had no doubt." Baba peered at him intently for a moment before sizing up Athena. She seemed to like what she saw, because she took a deep breath and plunged on. "After that, I have one more task for you two. A soul has recently come to my attention. I want you to find it for me." 

Athena frowned at her. "Why should we? And how did a soul get through the barrier between us and the afterlife?" 

"It's called reincarnation. As for the why…" Baba smiled humorlessly. "That soul, dear girl, is the only chance we have of saving this world." 


	8. Chapter Seven: Forward Momentum

Disclaimer: _Dragonball Z_ is the property of Akira Toriyama. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

Author's Note: As always, many thanks to Nadia Rose for putting up with me when I was hashing out plot points and occasionally stealing brainwaves. Also, a big shoutout to Contrail, who was kind enough to listen to my ramblings. :) 

~~   
Second Chance 

Chapter Seven:   
Forward Momentum   
~~ 

There is an old saying, common to many cultures, that gods play games with the lives of men and the fates of planets. This is entirely true, as most old sayings are to some degree or another. Gods squabble, quibble, and bicker. They hold grudges and wage wars. With one noteable difference, gods are no different from petty mortals. That difference is in the scale. When mortal beings lose a game, a few pawns are taken and an ego is dented, but life goes on. When gods lose, cities are levelled, civilizations fall and entire universes simply cease to exist. 

The problem with this particular saying is that it leaves out a crucial piece of information, one that both the gods and the hapless beings they are supposed to serve would do well to remember. In a game with high stakes, everyone cheats. _Everyone_. Including the pawns. Sometimes -- not often, but sometimes -- mere mortals one-up the gods and kidnap the rule book. Very rarely, they go a step further and rewrite it. 

And when a planet gets involved, there might as well be no rules at all. Gods cheat, but at least they acknowledge the rules. Planets don't even admit that the games exist, much less follow the laws those games are governed by. 

Deep inside the unassuming planet known as Earth, something long dormant began to stir. It wasn't sentient. Arguably it wasn't even alive. But it did have a finely tuned sense of self-preservation, and it was beginning to act in a way that no god or mortal, however omniscient, could have possibly predicted. 

Death was racing toward Earth. And Earth, well aware of this fact, was getting ready to cheat it. 

~~

_Satan City_

Marron's alarm clock went off at exactly 5:15 a.m., just like it always did. Like always, Marron bellowed some kind of slurred obscenity and threw it against the nearest wall, where it shattered in an impressive explosion of circuitry, emitting one final, defiant _BEEP!_ in the process. The C.E.O. of Capsule Corporation was not a morning person, and thus single-handedly kept several clockmakers in business. 

Most mornings Trunks cursed the existence of Marron's clocks, but not today. He hadn't slept at all. When his landlord stumbled into the kitchen at precisely 6:15, her stiletto heels clacking on the tiled floor, he was already in the middle of making breakfast. One of the informal conditions of his equally informal lease was that he always prepared his own food. Theoretically he was supposed to pay for his own food as well, but Marron had never bothered to collect on that debt. He suspected she was saving it so she would have something to lord over him later. 

"You look rumpled," she growled, and attacked the coffee machine without further ado. 

Trunks just glared at the stove. He was in no mood to talk to Marron -- not after last night. Bad enough that she was ignoring a serious threat to the planet. Bad enough she was unwilling to risk her own neck, even if it meant potentially saving billions of innocent people. Oh no, she had to rub in what a failure he was again and again and again. Because hey, why not? There was nothing about him to suggest otherwise. 

"Breakfast," he muttered, and flipped a fried egg onto her plate. She sipped her coffee and ignored it, so he slid his own mountain of eggs onto a plate and settled at the kitchen table to pick at them. Once or twice he stole a glance at her, but she was reading the morning paper's business section with a furrowed brow. Insult given, she was apparently determined to ignore him. 

If he hadn't lived with her for so long, he wouldn't have known anything was wrong with her. Marron appeared to be utterly unfazed by the events of last night, much less by the approaching end of the world. Her hair was swept up into its perfect bun, her makeup was flawless, and her expensive blouse and short skirt were crisp and clean. She was an almost perfect copy of her _jinzouningen_ mother, complete with narrowed blue eyes and an expression that suggested anyone who got in her way would wish they had never been born. 

She was worrying her lower lip with her teeth. 

"Are you scared?" he asked, although he hadn't been planning to speak at all. 

Her reaction was immediate. She looked up and clutched the business section so tightly that her manicured nails dented the paper. "Of course not!" she snapped, far too quickly. "I'm not scared of what I can't change." 

Normally he would have left it at that, but that morning he was too angry at her to bother with caution. "You could've fooled me." 

"No one cares what you think, twit!" She slammed her newspaper down on the table, nearly overturning her coffee mug. "If I want an opinion from the peanut gallery, I know where to look! Otherwise keep your mouth shut!" 

"Fuck you," he growled under his breath, and pushed his chair away from the table. He didn't know or care where he was going, as long as it was out of the kitchen and away from Marron. 

She glared after him, her jaw working as if she wanted to say something really crushing. That was fine with him. He was used to putting up with whatever abuse she felt like piling on him. When he paused in the doorway and glanced back at her, he saw the venomous look she was giving him, but she didn't say anything. She just held his gaze for a moment before looking away, almost as if she was... 

_That's impossible_, he thought as he left the kitchen, chuckling inwardly at the tricks his eyes were playing on him. _Marron's never ashamed of anything._

As he flopped on the living room's sofa, he glanced toward the guest room that had been handed over to Hito and Gizoku. For reasons he didn't understand, he wasn't at all surprised to see the latter standing just inside the living room, muffling a yawn with her hand. Gizoku peered at him for a moment, blinking blearily, before scowling and shuffling off toward the kitchen. He stared after her. 

Marron seemed to be convinced that Gizoku was Gohan's reincarnation, but Trunks wasn't so sure. He was well aware -- more aware than many -- of how much upbringing could change a person, and Gizoku had hardly grown up under ideal circumstances. Despite that, he was positive that there was something about the little girl that was just..._off_. She acted older than she should have, as if her physical and mental age didn't quite match. Yes, there were moments when she reminded him of a Son, like when she had been flying last night and when she had told everyone she was going to help fight off whatever was coming to Earth. Then he could see Marron's point. But most of the time.... 

She acted more like Videl than anyone else. Hell, she even looked a lot like Videl, especially with those pigtails she seemed to insist on wearing. If Trunks hadn't known for a fact that Gohan and Videl had only had one child -- and that Pan had been incinerated with her mother -- he would have thought Gizoku was someone much, much different than what Marron believed her to be. 

As if summoned by his thoughts, the girl scrambled onto the sofa next to him and held out his plate of fried eggs. "You want these?" 

Trunks shook his head. "Go for it." 

"Thanks!" Beaming from ear to ear, Gizoku proceeded to inhale the entire pile with a gusto that would have done any Saiyan proud. He took the opportunity to study her unobtrusively. She stuffed her cheeks like a chipmunk and had manners that made Goku's look refined. If nothing else, she _ate_ exactly like a Son should. Her blissful expression, if he squinted, was a bit like Gohan's. 

For that alone he was glad he had met the little terror. He had been the first Z Senshi to reach the university campus where Gohan worked after it had been firebombed. Now every time he tried to remember the man who might as well have been his big brother, the only image he could see was Gohan, burned almost beyond recognition and barely alive, tearing at rubble as big as boulders because his wife and daughter were still in the inferno somewhere.... 

"What're you looking at?" Gizoku demanded. The plate was empty and she was scowling at him as if daring him to say anything she didn't want to hear. 

Trunks shook away the memories. "I'm not allowed to look where I want?" 

"Go stare at the rich lady or someshit." 

"I am _not_ talking to Marron." That was the last thing he felt like doing. 

Gizoku shrugged. "Someone should knock her around. The stick up her ass has a stick up its ass." 

He managed to bite back a laugh. "She's just a bitch." 

Gizoku's answer was an indelicate snort. "I don't care _what_ she is. She said she'd train me and give me food, and that means I can take care of Hito for once." A frown furrowed her brow -- not a petulant, childish scowl, but one that was worried and far too adult. "Besides," she muttered, "we've got the world to save, right?" And she flashed a challenging grin that would have given the most determined enemy pause. Trunks wondered why he found it so troubling. 

Before he could puzzle out the source of his unease, Gizoku had passed back the plate and given him a pleading look. She wasn't acting like a tough street kid at all. For someone who routinely beat the snot out of people, she had the last-puppy-in-the-pet-shop stare down to perfection. 

"You any good at pancakes?" she asked hopefully. 

Trunks couldn't believe this. "I already made eggs. I am not making you pancakes." 

"Just a couple?" 

"What did I just say? I'm not making pancakes!" 

"_Please?_" 

Apparently Gochi wasn't the only little girl he couldn't say no to. 

~~

By the time Marron finished sorting through her portfolio, laptop and suitcase, it was almost seven in the morning and everyone in the apartment was up. Trunks had already stalked back into the kitchen to make pancakes of all things. Gizoku bounced around him, pigtails bobbing up and down as she proved that she had spent far too much time with Gochi. She was so excited about the pancakes that she had hauled Hito out of bed. At the moment the too-thin prostitute was huddled on a chair in Marron's kitchen, wrapped in a terry-cloth bathrobe and watching Gizoku dance around with a tiny, sad smile. 

"The housekeeper comes in at nine," Marron said as she poured her fourth cup of coffee into a travel mug. It was a warning more than anything else. Her housekeeper was eighty years old and about four feet tall, and she hated everyone on the planet except Trunks. As far as she was concerned, the stupid twit could do no wrong -- which was probably why he was the only person in the entire building who hadn't met the business end of her mop. 

Sure enough, Trunks gave no sign that he had heard her. Hito nodded and returned to sipping her coffee, and Gizoku didn't look up from a fresh pile of pancakes. She had syrup and butter piled all around her and she wasn't even bothering to use a fork. Crumbs were flying everywhere, accompanied by sounds that reminded a slightly queasy Marron of a clogged vacuum trying to suck up a puddle. 

"I'll let you know if Goku calls us," Trunks said as he tackled his own pancake pile. Marron glared at him and very nearly opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with anything Goku told him, but something made her stop. Instead she just snatched up her newspaper and her coffee mug and stormed out of the apartment. 

"What a bitch," Gizoku muttered as she left the kitchen. "Who died and made her queen?" 

Marron slammed the door behind her. The doorknob tore free with a splintering noise and she found herself staring at it, still clutched in her white-knuckled grip. With a supreme effort, she forced her ki back down to a normal level and flung the doorknob to the floor. She could still hear Gizoku's voice inside the apartment, although she couldn't make out the words. 

"Little brat," she growled, and stormed off to work without a backwards glance. 

~~

_Pepper City_   
_a few hours later_

"Poppa? Poppa, we're gonna be late!" 

Goten propped himself up on his arms and blinked blearily at Sayo, who was standing beside his bed with her hair in disarray and peering up at him. Suki was next to her, looking very small in her oversized pajamas. A glance at the clock told him it wasn't even five in the morning yet. 

"Poppa?" Sayo repeated, and reached up to tug at his sleeve. 

"I know. I'm up." Goten managed to sit up and hid a yawn behind his hand, glancing around the tiny bedroom. Even in the pre-dawn darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling on the walls and there were cracks in the ceiling. The furniture was secondhand -- the bed came from Paresu's parents, the dresser from a garage sale, the pictures from his well-meaning but determined mother-in-law. The people in the pictures were all from Paresu's side of the family, and he didn't feel inclined to change that. 

He glanced at Sayo and Suki again, and his heart sank. Vegeta had disappeared after delivering his message, and so far Dende hadn't tried to contact either him or Paresu again, but that didn't change much. There was a meeting on the Lookout today, and his two little girls were going to be introduced to a world he had hoped to keep hidden from them. Odds were he'd lose one or both of them before all of this was over. 

"We're gonna make breakfast!" Suki announced, and tugged her sister out of the bedroom and toward the kitchen. Goten followed them, careful not to wake Paresu up. There were few things that could drag him out of bed this early, but his children wrecking the kitchen was definitely one of them. 

Once he had checked on a still-sleeping Yoshi and planted bowls of some horrible chocolate cereal in front of the girls, he made himself a cup of tea and went to stand by the kitchen's one window. The sun wouldn't rise for a while, so the streetlights were still on and most of the other houses on the block were still dark. The neighborhood he and Paresu lived in wasn't great, but it was safe enough and they had actually been able to afford a house here. Admittedly it wasn't a nice house, or one he would have wanted to live in. But there was a roof over their heads and they owned it, which was more than could be said for some of his former friends. 

He wasn't looking forward to seeing Trunks, or his father and little sister. They were all reminders of a world he had quite deliberately left behind. It was a world that had never done him any good and had gone out of its way to make his life miserable, and as far as he was concerned it could wither and die. He hadn't exactly been happy to leave it behind, but it had brought him a certain measure of peace. And now here it was again, dragging his little girls back into it just in time to throw them at the newest monster hell-bent on destroying them. 

Somewhere out there, there was a deity who had decided to make his life miserable. He wondered what he had done to deserve it. 

"Where are we going?" Sayo asked around a mouthful of cereal. She was poking Suki with her spoon, since the other girl had fallen asleep on the table. 

"To the Lookout," Goten said without really looking at her. 

There was a thoughtful silence before she spoke again. "Oh, okay. Where's that?" 

Goten grimaced and turned to face his daughter. There was no point in hiding anything from her now. "It's a floating platform in the sky." 

Sayo's eyes grew wide. "Like an airplane? Are we gonna go on a plane?" She started bouncing in her chair and shaking Suki, who blinked at her curiously. 

"No, we're not going on a plane." When Sayo wilted and Suki just looked more confused than usual, Goten sighed and focused his ki for the first time in years. He pushed off the linoleum and floated up until his hair almost brushed the ceiling. "That's how we're going," he said quietly. 

Sayo gaped at him. Suki, in her own way the more logical off the two, hopped off her chair and wandered over to wave her hand under her father. When she encountered nothing, she squinted up at him and scratched her head, further mussing her already tangled hair. "How'd you do that?" Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Are you Superman, Poppa?" 

"Of course he's not," Sayo said authoritatively, shaking off her shock to step into her bossy big sister role. Almost before she finished her sentence, she frowned at Goten and let a hint of doubt creep into her voice. "You're _not_ Superman, are you?" 

"No, I'm not Superman." Goten sighed and drifted back to the floor, tracking his descent so that he wouldn't bump into Suki. The little girl had scrambled out of the way and was watching him with unabashed awe. When he had touched down, he sighed and folded his arms across his chest. "It's just a trick I can do. You're probably going to learn how to do it too." 

He managed to hide a grimace at the way his daughters' faces lit up. "I can be Supergirl!" Sayo crowed, and waved her spoon around like a sword. Cereal flew everywhere. 

Suki scowled and stomped her foot. "Nuh uh. I'm Supergirl!" 

"Are not!" 

"Am too!" 

"Are not!" 

Goten rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was sure he hadn't been this bad at their age. More to the point, there had only been one of him. "Neither of you is Supergirl," he said, hoping that that would settle the argument or at least make them both unhappy. Before they could protest, he crossed the tiny kitchen and began cleaning up the cereal Sayo had scattered all over the table. "Now keep it down, you two. Your mother's still asleep." 

"No, she's not," a tired voice said behind him. He spun around and saw Paresu leaning against the wall, still dressed in the sweatpants she used as pajamas. A half-awake Yoshi was balanced on her hip. 

"Sorry," Goten muttered, and glared at the unrepentant girls, who were sticking their tongues out at each other. 

Paresu shrugged and leaned over to wrap her free arm around him. "I'm used to it. Those two could wake the dead." 

He didn't bother to comment on what were, under the circumstances, a very poor choice of words. Instead he just hugged her and ran his fingers through her hair, attempting what he was sure was a poor imitation of a smile. "Are you and Yoshi going to be okay?" 

"No," she said, and then sighed and shook her head. "Why does Dende need _them?_ They're so little! They're not going to make any difference!" 

"They might," he said softly, although he didn't really believe it either. He just tightened his hug and let Paresu hide her face against his shoulder. When he glanced over at Sayo and Suki, he saw them playing superhero on the kitchen floor. He wished they didn't look quite so young. 


	9. Chapter Eight: All Fall Down

Disclaimer: _Dragonball Z_ is the property of Akira Toriyama. This story was written for fun, not profit. Please don't sue.

Author's Note: As always, much thanks to my reviewers for their encouragement, and to Nadia Rose for helping me sort out plot points and letting me steal brainwaves.

:::

Second Chance

Chapter Eight:  
All Fall Down

:::

Ano'yo 

Launch was just starting to wish she'd brought entertainment along when the cavalry showed up. More or less.

She glanced up at the group of demons clustered around her, all of them sporting sleeveless white shirts with the word HELL stamped on them. For a moment she let them take her in – a human woman sitting in front of a tent, cleaning a rather nasty-looking machine gun – before she climbed to her feet and planted her free hand on her hip.

"About time," she snapped. "I haven't got all day."

The demons exchanged long-suffering glances, leaving Launch with the distinct impression that they'd been forced to cut a coffee break short. When she started tapping her foot, one of them turned and scowled at her. "What're you doing down here, lady?"

"Aside from being bored out of my skull?" Launch casually hefted her machine gun, just in case these geniuses got any ideas. "I'm looking for someone. About this tall, spiky hair – ringing any bells?"

"How would I know?" The demon sighed and motioned to his companions. "Grab her. And take down that damn tent."

Launch scrubbed her face. Then she peeked at the lead demon through parted fingers, snarled, and swung the butt of her machine gun at his temple.

He staggered back and glared at her. "_Ow!_ What the _fu – _"

But Launch was already on a roll. She had been a tough person to catch even when she was alive, and between putting up with the Z Senshi and training with the North Kai, she had gotten a whole lot stronger. Before any of the demons could really figure out what to do with her, she spun around on the ball of her foot and sent their leader flying with a quick kick. Since bullets weren't likely to do much damage, she settled for wielding her machine gun like a club and going after the rest of the demons with a feral grin.

After training with the likes of Tenshinen and Videl, these goons didn't even make her break into a sweat. Fuckers.

Once she had shot-putted the last demon into the lake, she stopped long enough to beam at her handiwork. Then she slipped her gun under one arm, turned around, and walked into something that felt like a living wall.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she snapped, rubbing her squashed nose and glaring up at the newcomer. "It's about damn time!"

:::  


  
Satan City 

The problem with having a lot of enemies was that, when push came to shove, it was hard to figure out who was out for your blood at that particular moment. It made life a little irritating – and, more importantly, it had the potential to also make it interesting, violent, and short.

"Ki-users," Marron muttered, pacing back and forth across her spacious office. "They have to be. How the _hell_ did they know I'm a ki-user unless they are, too?"

It was a rhetorical question, but her assistant took a brave stab at answering it anyway. "There's some interesting footage of your parents – "

"But that doesn't explain how they knew what _I_ could control ki! They were prepared for that! They were sending special fighters!" Marron scowled at her poor assistant until he swallowed and stepped away from her. The large, hulking man knew plenty about ki, because when one was as rich as Marron happened to be, even the strangest job requirement could be matched up with a suitable candidate.

Which was why she didn't throw him down the hall when he piped up again. "You do have a stronger presence than most people, Ms. Kuri. And it becomes more…er, _pronounced_…when you're angry."

"Lovely." Marron sat behind her large desk and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Who's the last person I pissed off? The last _important_ person?" she amended, since her assistant was starting to look panicked.

This only shortened the list a little bit, since Marron had a habit of upsetting people on a fairly regular basis. Nonetheless, after a few moments thought, her secretary produced a name. "There's Qampie Corporation."

She shook her head. "Not them." Aidan Qampie, her fellow C.E.O. and would-be rival in South Africa, had a certain amount of ruthlessness to match his business instincts, but she knew that he wasn't prone to murdering rivals. She glared at her assistant. "Next?"

"The Ankuash family, Ms. Kuri?"

Marron blinked. "What, _again?_ What did I do _now?_"

"You threatened to use their elders as cricket bats."

"They'd have deserved it," Marron grumbled, and then sighed and scrubbed her face. She did _not _need to deal with the Ankuashes. Not with her attempted murder, the end of the world, and her stupid promise to Gizoku all looming over her head.

Before she could seriously consider practicing ki techniques on her less savory rivals, there was a knock on her door. Her assistant frowned and opened it, revealing her wide-eyed secretary and a young woman Marron didn't recognize. She had black hair and very dark skin, and was dressed in a simple gray pantsuit.

Great. The last thing she needed was an intruder. She ground her teeth and gave her secretary a truly murderous look. "I _told_ you to cancel my appointments."

The secretary spluttered. "I know, but – "

"But _what?_" Marron snapped, and turned her glower on the young woman. "Who the hell are you?"

The young woman seemed to take that as her cue. She walked into the office and gave Marron a polite nod. "Your secretary had nothing to do with this," she said in heavily accented Japanese. "You will have to excuse me. I invited myself in."

"You did, did you?" Marron walked around to the front of her desk and half-leaned, half sat on the edge, folding her arms across her chest and trying to pin down where she had seen this very peculiar intruder before. Her face looked a little familiar.

"Your security is impressive, but I have seen better." The young woman shrugged. "My name is Bree Qampie. I believe you knew my father, Aidan Qampie of Qampie Corporation."

Marron's eyes narrowed. "We need to talk."

"Yes, we do." Bree Qampie nodded to the secretary and assistant, both of whom wisely beat a retreat, and walked toward Marron's desk without the slightest hesitation. She looked like she was still in her late teens, but she certainly had no qualms about acting like she owned the place.

Marron's office was spacious, but it could hardly be called opulent; it had two windows, the giant desk, a few cabinets and chairs, and no decorations to speak of. Bree took it all in with a practiced eye and settled herself in one of the smaller chairs. Although her hands were folded neatly in her lap and her legs were crossed primly, Marron could tell that she was ready to run away if she had to. It was a very impressive act, but the young woman was still terrified for some reason.

"You probably have not heard this," she said as Marron sat back down behind her desk. "We are keeping it to ourselves for very obvious reasons."

"Keeping what?"

She sighed. "My father was murdered last night while he was returned home from his office. As far as my sources can determine, it was the work of very skilled and very precise thieves."

"Thieves," Marron echoed. She felt rather numb. Aidan Qampie had been her rival and she hadn't particularly liked him, but she hadn't wanted him dead. She steadied herself quickly and gave his daughter a searching look. "What makes you think they were such good thieves?"

"Because my father could defend himself. He was not an easy man to kill. Also, we have evidence." Bree Qampie's self-control was amazing. If Marron hadn't been watching her very carefully, she would have missed the way her hands shook as she unfolded a piece of thick, glossy photo paper. "My father's ID card was missing from his wallet when he was found," she said as she passed the paper over. "This morning, we also discovered that this was missing from Qampie Corporation's private vaults. I think you might recognize it."

Marron took the paper and unfolded it carefully, sucking in a sharp breath when she saw the picture printed on it – an orange sphere, marked with six black stars. "This is a Dragon Ball," she said without thinking, and then immediately cursed herself for giving away any information.

But Bree didn't seem surprised. "It is," she said, taking the paper back. "My father had it in his possession when he founded Qampie Corporation. It is the only one of its kind that we have ever been able to find." She hesitated, and for an instant Marron could see her mask slip as she attempted to get control of herself. When she did speak again, her voice wavered. "Given the fact that you were my father's most visible rival, I felt that I should speak to you before I began my investigations."

"You think I had him killed." It wasn't a question.

If Bree had denied her obvious suspicions, Marron would have kicked her out of the office then and there. But she didn't. Instead she squared her shoulders and looked Marron in the eye. "Prove to me that you did not."

Marron scowled at her. Without looking away, she climbed to her feet and untucked her blouse long enough to reveal the bandaged wound one of the would-be assassin's bullets had left behind. "Someone tried to kill me, too," she said. "I'm just a better fighter."

Bree's jaw worked, as if she was trying and failing to think of something to say. Then all her strength seemed to leave her. She slumped in her chair and wilted. "I do not understand," she said, so softly that Marron wasn't sure she had been meant to hear. She looked up, her gaze almost accusatory. "Do you have one of these Dragon Balls as well? Is that why whoever killed my father also tried to kill you?"

Marron shook her head. "I know about them, but I don't have any on me. I've never seen anything like your father's, with the black stars."

Bree nodded. She looked as tired as Marron felt. "Do you know who might want to take them, then? My father did not have many enemies except…" She trailed off, staring at her hands.

"Except me," Marron finished. When the younger woman nodded, she sighed and began to shuffle through her paperwork. A second set of Dragon Balls weren't any of her business, and if they had gotten her rival killed – well, who was she to complain?

Except it could have been her. It could have been Chichi, since Goku definitely kept one of those stupid things at his house. It could have been her mother and father, even if she hadn't seen or spoken to them in years.

Hell, it could have been Trunks. He hadn't disassociated himself from that whole other world nearly as much as she had. It wouldn't be hard to trace a Dragon Ball back to him.

Maybe that was why she looked up at Bree. "What about the Ankuashes?"

Bree swore in a language Marron didn't recognize. Then she seemed to remember herself and switched back to Japanese. "It sounds like the sort of thing they would do. Father never let them get away with anything."

"I didn't either," Marron said, grimacing at the fact that she had just referred to herself in the past tense, and reached for the phone. She had calls to make. In a moment of uncharacteristic charity, she jabbed a finger at the doors. "Go back to Qampie Corp. You can't do anything in Japan."

Bree looked as if she was about to protest, but since Marron was already on the phone with the numerous security agencies that owed her a favor, she didn't have much choice. She left quietly, leaving one fuming, mystified C.E.O. to her own devices.

:::

_elsewhere_

"Have I mentioned this is dumb?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Demitrius answered it anyway. He took everything too damn literally. "I think you did, actually. Five minutes ago."

"Oh." Athena stopped and scowled at him for a moment. _Only_ for a moment, because she was standing in a giant drainage pipe. Worse, she was up to her ankles in suspicious-looking, smelly muck. This was doing nothing to improve her temper. "It's _still_ dumb. I can't believe you're listening to that midget, Mitri."

"Uranai Baba is a witch," Demitrius said patiently. "And do you really want Dragon Balls in my relatives' hands?"

"I don't want _anything_ in your relatives' hands," Athena muttered, but she tightened her grip on their sleeping baby son and slogged after him. She half-expected her darling husband to say something reproachful, but he didn't. Knowing him, he was already thinking four moves ahead.

It was her own fault, she told herself for the hundredth time. She had met Demitrius while she was working at her family's tourist trap of a shop in Greece, and since no one had mentioned his last name, she had decided he was a decent person. By the time he had got around to bringing up whom he actually was, she had been quite besotted and willing to move heaven and earth for him. The fact that he was the heir-apparent to the largest and most ruthless criminal organization on the planet had seemed like a minor detail.

That was what she got for falling in love with the idiot.

Demitrius's family, the Ankuashes, weren't really a family at all. They were a series of loosely organized clans. Their generations-old practices of extortion, smuggling, assassination, and plain old intimidation had made them obscenely wealthy, and the chaos following the Deadly Spring had allowed them to slide into countless high-ranking positions in important businesses and national governments. Entire industries – hell, entire _countries_ – belonged to the Ankuash family now, and they might have been _the_ world power if one particular rival hadn't proven to be so formidable.

Any and all attempts to expand into Asia had come up against the might of Capsule Corporation and its ruthless chief executive. Marron Kuri fought dirty and was a trained ki-user, which meant that the clans had a serious problem. Attempting to frighten the richest woman in the world was laughable, and killing her had proven to be just as difficult. While she had never killed an Ankuash operative, Athena knew for a fact that three of the more skilled assassins had been in intensive care for months.

Capsule Corp's maneuvering had neatly driven the Ankuashes out of Asia, and now the newer, equally ambitious Qampie Corporation was steadily taking over their business interests in sub-Saharan Africa. The clans' attempts to move out of Europe and the Americas had been neatly halted, and everyone was furious.

Everyone except Demitrius, anyway. Defying hundreds of years of inbred nastiness, the presumptive heir to the whole mess had turned out to be a well-intentioned, kind-hearted human being.

Of course, the fact that he was charismatic as hell didn't hurt. Otherwise Athena wouldn't have followed him just because some midget witch had told her to.

She glanced over at him and asked the question that had been nagging at her for hours. "What are these Dragon Balls anyway?"

Demitrius grimaced. "As far as I can tell, they grant wishes. They can bring people back from the dead, if that's what the wisher wants, or they'll grant stuff like power and immortality."

"Which would be why your family's after them."

"Pretty much." Demitrius was rapidly slipping into what Athena had taken to calling his professor mode. If she didn't watch it, she was going to have a lecture on her hands. Possibly charts would be involved.

Which was why she headed him off. "The short version, Mitri."

Her husband gave her a wounded look, clearly editing whatever he had been about to say. "There's two sets of Dragon Balls – the regular ones, and a more powerful set called the Black Stars. The regular ones haven't really worked right since the Deadly Spring, so I think my family's going to try using the Black Stars instead."

"I'm waiting for the 'but'."

_"But_ the Black Stars are dangerous," Demitrius continued rather irritably. He didn't like being predictable. "Uranai Baba told me all about them. Anyone who uses them will basically destroy the world, and Earth's in enough danger as it is. I can't let my family make anything worse." He flexed his fingers around the hilt of his sword. It was a giant of a family heirloom, so notched and worn that any inscription was long lost.

Athena felt for her own sword, pausing long enough to rub her palm against the reassuring roughness of the wrapped hilt. "And you trust that mi – that witch?"

"More than I trust my family."

"That's not saying much," she muttered, but sighed and shifted her hold on their son. She hadn't wanted to bring him along, but there was no one she really trusted to protect him.

Demitrius shrugged. "No, I guess it's not." He ran his fingers through his messy hair and gave her a sidelong look – one of those glances that made her wonder if he was really as nice as he seemed, or if he was playing a cosmic joke on the universe. "You didn't have to come along, you know."

"And let you have all the fun? Are you crazy?" She made a face. "This is still a dumb idea."

"I know," he said, and smiled faintly before he forged on.

:::  


  
Satan City 

Gizoku's inevitable questions had started up the instant she finished off her pancakes, although for a while they were confined to normal things. These included classics like "How the hell does the TV work?" – a twenty-minute ordeal in its own right, since Marron believed in conspicuous consumption. The girl never seemed satisfied with an answer, and so Trunks found himself following her through different rooms as she scrambled on top of furniture, poked at electronics, and generally left footprints everywhere.

The housekeeper hadn't been pleased, as the large lump on Gizoku's head was attesting to. Like so many others before her, she had met the business end of a mop and been unceremoniously booted from the apartment.

"You know lotsa weird people," she grumbled as she fell into step beside Trunks. Although he hadn't been kicked out of the apartment, he had left Hito to the housekeeper's mercies and tagged along to keep Gizoku out of trouble.

He shrugged and glanced at his watch. Dende would be expecting them to turn up sooner or later. "I've met weirder."

"No kidding." She tilted her head to one side, reminding him of a much younger Goten. "What're we gonna do now?"

"Do you remember the people Marron and I were talking to last night?"

"What, the guy with hair like _fwoomp?_" This none-too-helpful description was accompanied by flailing hand motions, as if she was trying to pantomime Goku's bizarre hairstyle.

Trunks hid a grin and nodded. "Right. We're going to see him again."

"And talk about whatever's coming to Earth, right?"

His mirth vanished as quickly as it appeared, pushed away by dread and memories. "Yeah," he said softly. "That's it."

Gizoku fell silent, hunching her shoulders as she trudged beside him. When she did look up again, it was with that strange, bright light in her eyes that always made something inside him lurch. It was proud and feral and utterly Saiyan, very much like Gohan when he had been determined to defend his home and family.

"You do this a lot?" she asked suddenly.

He frowned. "Do what?"

"Save the world."

The question caught him completely off-guard, and he spluttered for a moment before shrugging. "What makes you think I save the world?"

"'Cause you're not panicking or some shit like that. You're just doing what you've got to."

That made no sense to him. Whether he liked Marron pointing it out or not, he knew he was the textbook definition of a failure. Fighting off some kind of threat to Earth wasn't heroic. It was just something he _did_. Hell, it was what all of the Saiyans on the planet seemed to do, often on a regular basis.

"I'm not a hero," he said.

Gizoku rolled her eyes. "Naw, but you're not like the rich lady, either." She flashed a little-girl grin. "I used to wanna be Saiyaman when I was a kid. I figured he had all the fun, 'cause he got to go around beating people up and looking dumb in a cape."

_And look how he died_, Trunks added in the privacy of his own head. But he didn't say anything. He just shrugged, watching with the now-familiar lurch as Gizoku stomped off in front of him and floated a few feet in the air with her arms crossed, heedless of the fact that one of Marron's neighbors could open their door at any moment. It was a silly, childish picture, like something out of someone's rose-tinted memory, and he imagined that he saw flames licking at its edges.

He caught her by her arm and hauled her back to the floor, ignoring a blow that could have shattered concrete. Instead he loomed over her as if he was a put-upon parent. It was a strange comparison to make, and if he had been given any time he would have wondered at why the idea had even crossed his mind.

"I'm taking you to the Lookout," he said. "Behave."

She rolled her eyes. "Spoilsport."

He ignored that, too. "You don't have to come along," he said. "Not if you don't want to. Marron will train you anyway."

Later, he would wish that there had been some kind of strained silence – any sign at all that she had hesitated. But she didn't. She just glared. "I want somebody to fight, asshole. Are we gonna go or not?"

Trunks nodded, but didn't let go of her until she twisted free. She scurried off down the corridor, out into the lobby and past the doorman. After a moment, he sighed and followed her. Dende was probably wondering where the hell they were.


End file.
